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Hollywood's Growing Obsession With Philip K. Dick
bowman9991 writes "Even after Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Impostor, and Next, it appears Hollywood's lust for movies based on Philip K. Dick material continues. The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Terence Stamp, is the latest, and features some classic Dick themes, including the fragile nature of reality and a fight against a world controlled and manipulated by powerful unseen entities. When Congressman David Norris meets the love of his life after a political defeat, he must peel back the layers of reality to discover why a mysterious group is so desperate to make sure they never meet again. He is up against the agents of fate itself — the men of The Adjustment Bureau. The Adjustment Bureau adaptation follows news that Terry Gilliam will adapt Dick's novel The World Jones Made, that Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Ubik are being adapted, and that a remake of Total Recall is being developed by the ironically named Original Films Studio."
So basically, Dick is dead and can't object, and the Trust is monetising his heritage while they still can because the clock is ticking..
Hollywood has made money off of his material, so they're eager to go back to the well. The good news, thus far at least, is that the material they're using is actually well-written.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, IMO.
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That's the one I really want to see ! It could become a classic movie, if done correctly.
How about some hard sci-fi on the big screen, for a effing change? Honestly, aliens that copulate with black hookers and live in a ghetto, or Dance with the Volves on another Planet just didn't do it, for me. Neither did Total Recall, for that matter. Take some of Stephen Baxter's opus - hopefully not even Hollywood can screw up that!
For me, the epitome of sci-fi filmography was The Andromeda Strain (the original one, of course). Plenty of creativity, yet pretty hard sci-fi (coupled with believable acting/good directing) and no flying thumbs from the bottom of a reactor.
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Dick's stories are perfect for film adaptation because they tend to be short - either short stories or novellas. His longest novels are still very short compared to most of what gets published today in the sci-fi genre. Short stories are easier to adapt to film - you generally have to cut a lot out of a novel to make it fit into a two hour movie, but short stories translate to a script more easily. Dick's stories also tend to have the kind of plot twists and the potential for action sequences that Hollywood favors, and he's well known and has a fairly big cult following. There are tons and tons of good sci-fi short stories out there, but very few of their authors are as well known as PKD. Combine all that together and they're a natural choice for adaptation.
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... along with a dearth of stories
That should read "along with a wealth of stories."
I think you're giving Hollywood way too much credit for caring about the artistic merits of their work. The simple fact is someone made money off a movie based on one of Dick's books, so now everyone that wants a movie made knows if they can say it's based on his work they're much more likely to get funded. The people who bankroll movies love to minimize risk, and at this point Philip K. Dick is a proven winner. What's likely to happen is a string of mediocre to awful films based on his work until the whole thing peters out and filmmakers find some other property they can make several movies from. It's not a coincidence that multiple movies based on a certain type or genre or author tend to come out within a couple of years of each other...it's just filmmakers knowing what's hot at the moment and getting on the gravy train while they can.
Yeah, the Andromeda Strain was awesome! It was also the debut of the great (and sadly late) Michael Crichton on the silver screen, and he has written many entertaining books and movie scripts after that.
I loved the sets they used in the original, the same hallway painted in different colors to indicate another level inside the contained structure... There was definitely some good acting, and the suspense was heightened by the awesome soundtrack... And they left the origin of the strain kinda in the middle (although the new movie had a mildly interesting sci-fi-ish plot with a wormhole from the future... it felt a little too much Star Trek).
So basically, Dick is dead and can't object, and the Trust is monetising his heritage while they still can because the clock is ticking..
Considering that old franchises like The Lord of the Rings and even Sherlock Holmes are still making money for their rights holders thanks to copyright extensions, that would be a slow ticking clock.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Woo, Terry Gilliam's in charge? Then we can look forward to a movie 10 years late,
I waited thirty years to see Lord of the Rings. Patience is a virtue.
substantially overbudget,
Why should I care?
yet still looks half-done.
The Gilliam movies I've seen are Time Bandidts, Twelve Monkeys, and Brazil*. I fail to see how any of those movies "look half done."
* not counting the Monty Python movies, but they didn't "look half done" either, except perhaps Holy Grail, shich was supposed to look like it did.
Free Martian Whores!
Hollywood is obsessed with secret, powerful, out-of-control, quasi-government agencies because Hollywood is a secret, powerful, out-of-control, quasi-government organization. They are obsessed with destroying the finances and lives of thousands of random people in order to obtain and retain control of the cultural and emotional mental frameworks of most people in the developed world.
This fascination with the themes of Phillip K. Dick is only a reflection of their own neurotic narcissism.
Not because the movie was spectacular. But because of what many (most/all) missed.
When the technicians are putting Quaid under for the vacation implant with the 'secret agent' option - one of the techs chuckles "Mars with a blue sky"
I guess I'll have to read Phillip K Dick's book to see if that was the intention.
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... will they be done in 3D?
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
The problem with hard sci-fi is that it appeals to a niche audience only. This used to be ok, but nowadays studios want films to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Which, incidentally, is also why so many films that could have been amazing end up being pretty terrible. It doesn't help that sci-fi is generally expensive to produce, why spend all that money when the much cheaper standard-relationship-comedy-sequel ends up earning more?
Not to say I wouldn't love to see more sci-fi or cyberpunk films. I'm not sure how you'd compress the Xeelee Sequence into a 2 hour movie (even if it's just a part of it), but I'd kill to see Takeshi Kovacs on the big screen.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
In my opinion, the Science Fiction genre is tired and overdone in very predictable ways.
That's because Gollyweird rarely makes a true science fiction.
Most of their shit and it's mostly shit, are really horror movies set in space - they're really a slasher movie but with an alien doing the slashing - Aliens.
Or they're just a rehash of Terrestrial plots and themes in "space" see Star Wars and Star Trek.
And when they actually do make a movie by a SciFi master, they fuck it up.
Now, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) has the ability to do it. Whether the zipper heads in Hollywood will actually make a true science fiction movie is another story. There is hope, though, considering he got the money to do the Rings Trilogy.
The rare good sci fi, such as Primer hardly gets any promotion.
...predicting the future is the most powerful superpower of all.
Nic Cage was arguably a superhero in Next because seeing 2 minutes into the future let him outmanouver bad guys and walk through machine gun bursts untouched. Seeing an hour into the future let Tom Cruise and the precogs eliminate murder. And seeing a whole day into the future in Paycheck let Ben Affleck save the world.
Even Dick's novels don't feed the need; Push showed Dakota Fanning the most important of a bunch of psychic heroes because the seers are always a step ahead of you.
Not that Dick was way out there with that; it was the most powerful spice-given power in Dune, and even George Lucas makes it a plot-steering device in Star Wars. Just the ability to see a fraction of a second into the future made 9-year-old Anakin a top race driver.
(Funny coincidence: not long after the recent Star Wars movies came out, BBC did a special "Top Gear" about race driving and the host actually took Michael Schumacher into a bar and demonstrated Schumacher was no better than anybody else at the old trick of "catch the bill before I drop it through your fingers". He has the same physical reaction time as anybody else. Top drivers like Schumacher *anticipate* what's coming next - seeing into the future by the ordinary ability of the brain to model the world - and actually start reacting to things before they happen. Lucas is really pretty smart, just not so hot at dialogue.)
J.R.R.Tolkien died in 1973 so thats just over halfway into the post-death years of life+70, but Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930 and his works are available at Project Gutenberg now. Philip K Dick died 28 years ago (1982) and he was never as popular as either of them, and is unlikely to get more popular as time goes by. Even 'Blade Runner' is rarely known as anything but a Ridley Scott or Harrison Ford film and that is probably the most well known derivation.
hopefully not even Hollywood can screw up that!
You underestimate the power of Hollywood.
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Yup... The same thing happened with Michael Crichton in the 90's... Jurrasic Park, Lost World (Although that was REALLY different from the book), Sphere, Congo, Rising Sun and Disclosure... It sort of extended into the 2000's with 2003's Timeline.
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
If you look at Adjustment Team, we see that it is in the public domain.
As is The Variable Man, The Golden Man, The Last of the Masters, Meddler, Shell Game, The Turning Wheel and possibly a number of other stories.
But obviously this just proves, that without never ending copyright claims, the world will never see great art again.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930. Copyright extends crazily 70 years after the death of the author. That means that Sherlock Holmes entered public domain in 2000. Walt Disney died in 1966. Though some of his work were made before the last Sherlock Holmes stories, none of these will become public domain before 2036. Yeah. 2036. At this date, the cartoon that inspired Turing's suicide in 1954 (Snow White) will finally be considered part of history.
Realize that there may be a human settlement on the moon before the cartoons broadcasted before WWII will be public domain.
Realize that we only put a ridiculous proportion of these on digital form and that 99% of them are decaying in analog form. Consider how much cultural heritage is lost for the profit of so few people.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Gilliam (and Burton for that matter) make wonderful fantasy worlds, but pacing, character development, and story continuity are not their strong suits. - j
"What's next, KDawson submitting good stories?"
OK, NOW you're just being silly!
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You think so? You *really* think so? 'Cause I don't. Disney will get yet another extension. The Mouse will never be public domain.
What was wrong with Fear and Loathing?
EX POST FACTO ,that little nigger called Sonny Bono had NO idea about the law, and neither did his
contemporaries. Niggers All!! Take that positive karma !!!!!!!
To be fair, that's not an uncommon misunderstanding.
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