Ridley Scott to Produce Philip K Dick's The Man In the High Castle

hawkinspeter (831501) writes Amazon has given the green light to produce the Hugo award-winning "The Man in the High Castle". This is after the four-hour mini-series was rejected by Syfy and afterwards by the BBC. Philip K Dick's novel takes place in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the Second World War. It's one of his most successful works, probably due to him actually spending the time to do some editing on it (most of his fiction was produced rapidly in order to get some money). Ridley Scott has previously adapted PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as the film Blade Runner, so it will be interesting to see how close he keeps to the source material this time. This news has been picked up by a few sites: International Business Times; The Register and Deadline.

Comments

Blade Runner's script had little to do with Ridley

[tekrat]

What Ridley Scott brought to the table was an art-director's viewpoint. I believe it was his call that the world be dystopian rather than utopian. Syd Mead was brought in to realize that vision from Ridley's sketches.

Blade Runner was a magical coming-together of quite a few artists while they were at the height of their careers, Scott, Mead, Ford, Hauer hell, even Vangellis never was better. Blade Runner was Scott's attempt to bring back Film Noir in a sci-fi setting -- something that seems common now, but was a radical breakthrough then.

It's a tough act to follow. And as much as I like Ridley's visual style, his latest films have suffered badly from too much money lavished on sets and effects, and not enough on script and acting.

I can also say that, having read "Man in High Castle", that's not an easy book to put to film. It's a huge, complicated story that's not easy to follow. I just hope that they put the work into making the story work, and not gloss over it just to work in explosions and effects.

I had heard that Ridley was interested in Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" -- not *that's* a movie I want to see. That book blew my mind, and I really, really, really want a good movie of that.

Syfylys passes on an actual classic

[BenJeremy]

This is why you put an executive in charge of a channel that actually likes the genre. Bonnie Hammer only saw SciFi Channel as a stepping stone to a more mainstream network (USA), and installed another idiot who didn't really care for the shows they were peddling when she left.

They should be funding movies based on classics, whenever possible, instead of the crappy creature-of-the-week and pseudo-reality crap they shovel out every week. These days, its possible to deliver quality science fiction programming without busting your budget, too - but somebody at the top has to be motivated to deliver this to the fans (the network's viewer base), rather than dump garbage none of the fan base wants to see in order to draw more "mainstream" viewers.

Re:Syfylys passes on an actual classic

[MrTester]

Hell yes.
They have a couple of good properties now, but for the most part its crap.
And where is the classic SciFi appreciation? Forbidden Planet, Them, The Day the Earth Stood Still (without Neo). When is the last time they showed a black and white program other than Twilight Zone?

If I was in charge of SyFy:
1) Classic movie of the week with a Turner Classic Movies style intro talking about the movie, its impact, roots and the making of the movie.
2) Guest hosts introducing their favorite SciFi
3) Put together a stable of actors, authors and directors and host a weekly 90 minute-3 sketch late night program modeled on Saturday Night Live, but focusing on scifi story telling instead of comedy. Some of the sketches could be one offs, others a mini-series. Probably not live, although that might be fun too...
4) Get some real scifi lovers to look for classic works that they could get the rights to produce as movies. They dont have to be high budget. Take the same budget they spend now on their monster of the week movies, spend less on special effects and throw it at the scripts. I know thats not a lot, but give me a day and $500 and I can improve the hell out of their scripts.
5) No wrestling
6) Change the name back to SciFi

Re:Considering his history...

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

People who reject content based off of arbitrary genre preferences are a burden to themselves and others. I don't believe that prior to Firefly, you would have said, "I'm really wanting another Western." You don't like superheroes you say, and I call bullshit. You just don't want to be lumped in with liking something that's become mainstream. Get over it.