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Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' To Be Filmed
bowman9991 writes "Could this be the new Blade Runner? SFFMedia reports that Celluloid Dreams has obtained the movie rights to Philip K. Dick's science fiction masterpiece 'Ubik.' First published in 1969, Ubik's central character is Joe Chip, a technician for a telepathic organization that employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers so they can secure other people's privacy. In the novel, the dead are kept in 'half-life,' a form of cryogenic suspension, with limited consciousness and communication ability. A mystical substance called Ubik, available in spray-can form, is the only thing stopping reality from disintegrating before Joe's eyes. It'll be hard to film, but fantastic if they get it right!"
I hope it ends up more along the lines of the "A Scanner Darkly" adaptation (or Blade Runner, of course), rather than yet another dumbed-down effort like "Total Recall" or "Minority Report".
Jeremy
Not even that lousy T-shirt?
From The Summary: "A mystical substance called Ubik, available in spray-can form, is the only thing stopping reality from disintegrating before Joe's eyes"
From Wikipedia: "This substance, whose name is derived from the word "ubiquity", has the property of preserving people who are in half-life."
Draw your own conclusions about what chemical properties it may have.
Maybe I just didn't get it, but I saw Blade Runner, and I wasn't impressed. IMHO, I hope it isn't the next Blade Runner.
....they need: 1) A good actor as they had in Harrison Ford. 2) Faith that their audience is intelligent, so they don't have to go all "Summer blockbuster" on us. 3) A director who is willing to give the film the atmosphere it needs. Let's cross our fingers we get all of these.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Surreal movies with a bizarre plot are good. Surreal movies that turn into insipid action flicks 2/3 of the way through with vapid endings are bad. Let us hope the adaptation of Ubik doesn't repeat the mistakes of the adaptation of Fight Club.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Did anyone else read Philip's Dick to be filmed? I Think it is time to goto bed.
I hope a gifted director comes along and makes a GOOD science fiction adaptation of Asimov's Foundation series.
There's no way that Ubik could be filmed for a mainstream audience. The plot features telepaths and anti-telepaths, communication with the dead, time travel, coin-operated apartment front doors, people who suddenly turn into dust, a bomb blast that may or may not have killed all of the characters, and the usual questions about the nature of reality. Just figuring out a way to explain what the hell is going on will be a pretty big challenge. During the whole course of the plot, time is flowing backwards, so the filmmakers would have to build not just a static version of New York City, but one where all the artifacts are gradually transforming into their more primitive forms. If they can pull this off, it will be amazing, but its hard to imagine anyone tackling it without a big budget, and the eccentricities of the plot seem to preclude that. Its a wildly imaginative and thought-provoking book, and I hope someone makes it into an amazing film, I just don't expect it to ever happen. The one Dick book that I'm surprised hasn't been filmed is The Man in the High Castle, which has a much more conventional plot (by comparison) and would be more accessible to a mass audience.
So... it's like Unobtainium... that they've melted on a sliver spoon and shot into corpses?
I'd say iots more like Unattainium, slightly more volatile, and can become Dihydrogen Monoxide in some cases under pressure.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is largely set in a potentially realistic dark future setting, some things more advanced, others decaying. Most of the environment is easy to make real without making it look silly, not to downplay the great work done by Ridley Scott and everyone else involved. The one aspect of the novel that would be difficult to reasonably translate to the silver screen is Mercerism, the animal worshiping cult/religion of the future. So, they dropped it from the film, which takes a slightly different view anyway. (The only reason it would be difficult is because the way in which one tries to become one with Mercer is very abstractly represented throughout the novel.)
Ubik on the other hand is almost entirely abstract stuff. In fact, it is more abstract than the Mercerism stuff. There is some great imagery in Ubik that would be easy to translate, but by and large, making the novel come to life without making it look ridiculous would be very difficult. The way I picture Ubik, the scenes would have to appear incomplete for most of the novel, from the standpoint of anyone in cold-pac, and that would be much harder to pull off. I doubt anyone that the current Hollywood industry is likely to pull it off. The best they could hope to do is to make something reminiscent of The Thirteenth Floor.
Insert self-referential sig here.
It's a *book*, books are these things that have words in them but you don't need electricity to read.
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
I'm sure it will turn out just as faithful as the other adaptations of his work have!
I just noticed that PKD's name could be shortened to 'Phil Dick.' Poor guy probably got beaten up every day in high school. Johnny Cash should write a song about him.
ubik, prepare to get butchered
Towards the end end where they had regressed from the future back to the 1930s and everyone was so old that they were crumbling into death and lacking the strength to even get up the stairs of the hotel in the 30s small town they were stuck in was one of the most powerful and heartbreaking things I have ever read.
:(
Please, please, please don't ruin it Hollywood.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
1. America loves guns
2. Bladerunner has big images of guns
3. Ubik might not have big images of guns
---
1. & 2. => Bladerunner is a popular movie.
1. & 3. => Ubik will never be a popular movie.
A little off topic: those coin-operated doors were like parodies of DRM. The guy owns the apartment, but the artificially intelligent front door won't open unless he pays it. Each time he has to give it a nickel. No nickel, no open. Transaction costs through the roof but hey, the door gets paid.
I liked this book, but I'm only part way through the follow up, Broken Angels, and I'll probably have to restart it.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
They're gonna fuck this all up.
I read Ubik in 1970 when reality dissolving in front of your eyes was standard weekend fare, thanks to Bear and others. What I would consider to be a great movie made from this would wind up as a cult film. In order to be really popular movie, it would needs be a crappy adaptation of the book.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Since "What Dreams May Come" is a movie about the dead and afterlife was film very nicely, maybe Vincent Ward would make a good director.
;-)
Remember "UBIK" is not about time travel, as some have said, or other high SciFi topics. It is about what life is and one's perceptions. The story is mainly from a view point of someone that is in the half-life world, discovering first that they are "dead", and second how to stay "alive". Then you throw in a "vampire".
There is another book call "Job: A Comedy of Justice" by Robert Heinlein that is equal strange with "reality-shifts" starting from page 1 like "UBIK", but that one in the end goes down the religion-hole, hence the name Job.
I guess I'd better buy the book now, before they all have Will Smith on the cover.
Total Recall ...
Screamers
Blade Runner
Impostor
Minority Report
Paycheck
A Scanner Darkly
Next
Radio Free Albemuth?
All great movies so far, I'm looking forward to more.
He's dead, Jim.
?giS
As some other ./ members have written, Ubik is a very complex book, that requires reader's attention. There are scenes in the book which would give any cgi guy nightmares, and the overall feeling is quite dark, like in many other Dick's works.
Faced with the challenge, the director and the studio would give us the following:
A man with a group of super sexy, super mad, super funy soldiers, who are both mutants and martial arts masters at the same time
Dead people appearing in the sky in tones of blue and at least one of them telling the main character I love you, as she fades away with a soft and emotional music.
etc etc...
I'd be more than happy to see this being done right, but it is higly unlikely. I guess there are some books which would rather not touched by studios unless they have a huge budget and a great cast, with a good director. Tiger Tiger is one of them, Ubik can be another one IMHO.
One of his books has a character called "Horselover Fat", which is apparently a translation of his name. Philip is derived from Philoppos - a greek name meaning lover of horses, and Dick is German for Fat. I think he was probably okay with his name.
Finally. I was just thinking about that piece the other day...
You all know that Dick already wrote a script, don't you?
From wikipedia:
"Attempts to produce an Ubik film
In 1974, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin commissioned Dick to write a screenplay for an Ubik film. Dick completed the screenplay, turning it in within a month, but Gorin never filmed the project. The screenplay was published in 1985 as Ubik: The Screenplay (ISBN-13: 978-0911169065)."
I have. I have not read it. Anyone knows if it is any good or do i have to have my own judgement -.-
I would just like to say 'I, Robot' and 'The Bicentennial Man'.
I don't hold much hope.
from Wikipedia:
"filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin commissioned Dick to write a screenplay for an Ubik film. Dick completed the screenplay, turning it in within a month, but Gorin never filmed the project. The screenplay was published in 1985 as Ubik: The Screenplay (ISBN-13: 978-0911169065)."
I've read interviews with Dick where he described how he envisioned the film. The book describes modern technology devolving into more primitive forms. He said that he wanted the film to be shot on the highest quality media of the time and then progressively worse media like 16mm film and then black and white 8mm. I'm doubting that this film will be shot this way. Amazing book though.
Neuromancer might be better :D
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037220/
Even though its gonna have Darth Vader in it.
Philhippos, the exact transliteration of the greek name, means lover of horses as in lover of music, good taste etc, not related to sexual love (in case you meant that), but that misunderstanding is quite common about greeks. "Philos" is a friend who loves. Think Philharmonic Orchestra.
I speak England very best
Ubik is utterly psychedelic. Telepathy, subjective realities that border on the hallucination and a warped flow of time will combine to make the movie very difficult to render in a way that will connect to mainstream audiences not under the influence of mind altering drugs. Of course there is always the option of emasculating the scenario to produce a bland simplified Hollywood-compatible blockbuster with extra explosions...
No it will not be the new Blade Runner as it has none of the same themes.
It might be the new Existenz or Videodrome, say.
Just because someone acquired the movie rights to a book doesn't mean it will ever see the light of day. It's not uncommon for rights to be bought and then for the project to languish indefinitely.
Purchasing rights != filming movie
You are welcome on my lawn.
It was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALIS which was semi-autobiographical.
I can't wait to see if they make a decent movie out of Ubik, but the chances are, they'll make another Paycheck instead of Bladerunner or Scanner Darkly
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
If not electricity, then nuclear power or some chemical light emitting reaction would be suitable.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
"There's no way that Ubik could be filmed for a mainstream audience"
That's the whole point, you're not meant to understand it. What you do is take some Lethal Substance D. before you enter the cinema, that way it'll made perfect sense. Philip K. Dick would have made a good writer, if he managed to ever stay off the chemicals, something his own mother started him on in early youth. Notice how the women in his novels are emotionally unavailable, a bit like dear old mom. Same with his five wives. He kept going out and marrying his mom. So to sum up, in the steriotypical PKD story, we have emotional disconnectedness and disruption of the psyche.
davecb5620@gmail.com
"You all know that Dick already wrote a script, don't you?"
No, no, no, that hasn't happened in this time stream. Similarly, Andy Gibb died of a drug overdose in your time stream, while here he's still alive, appearing on television and doing benefit gigs with the Bee Gees.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
You can have a look at their portfolio of which I recognise only two (Son of Rambow and The Magic Flute) and both were determined art-house flicks. Perhaps there is a cinephile on /. who can give us a quick overview of the quality of their portfolio?
Anyway, go ahead and put a tick in the box for "Art House/European production company".
Probably the most important group will be the team comprising the scriptwriters, director, reps from the PKD estate and the prinicipal storyboard artists. They will literally have to make the most amazing comic ever created before a single frame has been filmed.
[SPOILER]
To those who couldn't understand Ubik, it helps if you've read VALIS first and alot about PKD himself, particularly the period of time right after he recovered from being certified insane.
VALIS mixes fictional elements with real life experiences of his own becoming a bizarre self-referential story with one theme being how we take reality, particularly the model we hold of 'reality' in our heads, for granted. PKD noted that while he was apparently insane, he recalled that he never once stopped in mid-thought and assessed that what he was perceiving or thinking was crazy or mad. His perception and thoughts while "mad" were indistinguishable from when he was "sane". He could not point out a boundary separating the period of insanity from sanity. It just didn't exist. There is no built-in internal yardstick despite what a lot of us may believe. Its something you model during the process of living and it gains 'rigidity' upon adulthood. When you've apparently fallen off the edge and broken that yardstick, someone else has to tell you its broken. Someone else has to give you a new yardstick. Someone else has to 'reset it/re-model' for you. In his case it was his doctors. But then, who is checking the doctors' yardsticks aren't broken either? What if they are mad too and no one knows better? The mad healing the mad? This revelation profoundly affected him.
To the gentleman earlier who seemed to have the definitive opinion that Ubik was just a dying man's hallucinations, I can assure you I never felt sure about the ending as it seemed perfectly within PKD's twisted sense of humour for the ending to be just another misleading lie, further compounding that you just can't take what's presented to you for granted. I see Ubik as partly an attempt to share what it was like being insane. Imagine that you are directly involved in the events of the book and that when the book ends - right when you close the back cover - that you are suddenly looking into the kind blue eyes of a distinguished looking man in a white coat congratulating you on your recovery.
But that's just my 2 cents.
[END SPOILER]
Let's go lame... How about P(ee) Dick?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
This is great news!
No matter how many times I have read it, this book has never failed to generate such an incredible and tight aura, with an awesomely strange atmosphere, and feels to me like it truly is a shining example of what the definition of mindf*ck should be about. (In the meantime, and since this thing probably won't see the light of day until 2011, you'd hardly go wrong if you went and bought the book, and read it! You won't be disappointed!)
Along the same lines, I think that William Gibson's Neuromancer, but especially its sequel "Count Zero" (and arguably even the third one, Mona Lisa Overdrive, not quite as strong but still worthwhile) could yield a surprisingly entertaining Sci-Fi trilogy if in the hands of a capable director.
With all of the advances in 3D imaging and computer-generated special effects, it is quite reasonable to assume that all of these renditions could be done for an average movie budget, and still work. It's more how they adapt the script that will make it or break it.
Z.
...pick any two?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
.. all over town. Quick, where's my Ubik?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
If I were reading a book by the light emitted by nuclear power not involving electricity, I would be much more worried about the reality of me disintegrating than reading about reality disintegrating.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
...unless the light is emitted by a ball of gas boiling away in space at a safe distance from me.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
After painfully watching the TV remake of The Andromeda Strain, I've given up hope for deep Sci-Fi movies as were made in the 1960's / 1970's. What will be interjected and hammered home into the script includes, but is not limited to (a) some theme about how we are destroying our natural resources (bonus points for global warming), (b) rights of various groups of people whether it has anything to do with the story line or not, (c) stereotypical casting of various characters, (c) HAVE to explain EVERY ASPECT of the plot instead of leaving it to the imagination of the viewers (since they now don't have any) to the point of the explanation being absurd (wormholes apparently solve all movie plot problems), (d) US Government is evil, all other foreign governments are great, (e) reporters will save us, (f) movie events have absolutely no correlation with real world science, military policy, or government policy. After the movie is made, go back and see how many movie elements I mention are in it.
Besides being an amazing novel, Ubik is interesting because Phil actually wrote a SCRIPT to be filmed for Ubik. It's been published. You can buy it. It is, as far as I know, his only foray into screenwriting.
Man, I don't remember any Ubik in Half-life. Though I bet Morgan Freeman wouldn't mind having some! I wonder, would it do? Double health?
No, It's actually more like Unavailum. Plenty around, but none where you need it.
Guaranteed Absolutely Safe When Used As Directed!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
what is wrong with the moderation this should be +5 funny!
Nobody gets telepathy, unless it's like radio. Sender, receiver, and the grunt of effort on lightning-lanced faces that just. can't. hear. hard. enough...
:)
I haven't read Ubik, being more of a Pratchett fan, but it seems to me that "telepath" is as good a word as any for "paranoid schizophrenic." So, "Ubik" is a kind of tinfoil hat liner that one sprays on, like Off?
Don't trust Hollywood with this one
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Can't say the same for myself.
But in any case, I do not think there is much case for the opinion that the story is a dying man's hallucinations. For one thing, that would obviate the need for the story. For another, it would have made any mention of the frozen "vampires" completely irrelevant to the story... but they are in fact a central part of it. And finally, if that were Dick's intent, he would have made it more obvious.
Not even remotely. "Telepathy" is a necessary part of the theme of the book, but you would have to read it to understand why. I highly recommend that you do.
Many movies, such as The Hobbit in its various incarnations, Dune, and a number of others, were just not capable of delivering the depth and feel of the story in regular-movie-length format. In order for people to grasp what was really going on, it took longer and more faithful versions before they were really appreciated. (LOTR has become an "instant classic" for example, but it is what... about 11 or 12 hours in total?)
Ubik is not a 3-book-length novel as LOTR is, but even so, I believe the story deserves the longer-than-normal movie treatment. I do not believe the complexity of the plot could survive the typical movie cutting room floor. They should give it a good 2-1/2 to 3 hours.
counter-example: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Is that anything like oobleck?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Johnny Cash has been dead for several years. Sorry mate.
You should have known this was coming.
Let me know when they get David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, or someone with talent, vision, and insight to direct the movie. But, I'm counting on someone like Brett Ratner... :P
If you actually read Ubik, you'll find that it's an exceedingly minor Philip K. Dick novel -- to my eye, it looks as though it was written really rapidly, with an ending tacked on at random when he had enough pages. Call Dick a great writer if you like, but every single work of a great writer is not deserving of the label "masterpiece". Not that this has anything to do with what kind of film they're going to make (if any -- most film deals flop without producing anything, you guys know that, right?) because as with all the other Dick novels that have been "filmed" the screen-writers will do whatever they want to movie-up the material. The metaphysical joke that Dick had in mind (the answer to everything is everywhere) isn't going to survive the process. Essentially, they paid for the rights to a Philip K. Dick novel, just so they could say that they did.
While we're on the subject, can I point out that Philip K. Dick is not the only science fiction writer in the world? Like I said, call him a great writer if you like, but if so there are other great writers whose material could be raided help get the screenwriters off of the dime. You could film Brunner's "Stand on Zanibar", or Sturgeon's "More than Human", or Aldis' "Barefoot in the Head", or Delany's "Babel-17", or Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time", or Sterling's "Holy Fire"...
I'd have to agree with you there. Of the books I have read, Ubik was the least satisfying to finish. Other PKD works are easier to find a personal conclusion to. VALIS reads like a straightforward 70's documentary, a mix of John Updike's S. and RAWilson's Cosmic Trigger. You can't miss what his intent was for the reader. Still, Ubik got plenty of ideas across to me hence my essay up there.
But I wish they'd finish the damned Rama movie already...
That would be Valis which stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, an interesting novel about split personalities, laser information transfer gnosticism and other PKD topics that is well worth reading.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
That would be Valis, a novel which is perhaps even more abstract than Ubik