http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/syfy-plans-adaptation-of-philip-k-dicks-man-in-the-high-castle/

Ridley Scott producing.

"Man in the High Castle" as is could be difficult to adapt to the screen and make interesting (don't me get me wrong, I really like the book). This is going to be a tough one to get right, even if it is a mini-series which is probably the only possible chance of doing so, and they may be better served by changing the plot as most Dick adaptations have done (some well, some not). Who knows? We'll see ...

I love that book! One of my favorite works of sci-fi. Maybe my favorite...

I hope SyFy can make a worthy adaptation.

Not to jack the thread but I'd like your take on the other adaptations. I'd like everyone's take on them. I know some folks feel if you take libertys with the story for the sake of the screen then it doesn't matter if it's good or not, it's still heresy. I for one do not fall into that catagory, but I'd love to hear some other opinions.

From what I've seen so far from SyFy, I certainly wouldn't worry about them sticking too close to the source material ... be happy if you can recognize the main characters. ;)

The series can be good regardless, of course. (I did enjoy SyFy's "Riverworld" even though it basically raped the books.) Though I'm as skeptical as I'm curious. This is not the easiest material to be put in a movie. Also, as much as I adore Dick, I don't think that "Man in the High Castle" is a particularly good book. But perhaps SyFy's tendency to take the source material as "inspiration" at most, turns out to be a useful approach for this rather tough base material. :)

Actually, with the exception of "A Scanner Darkly", I would be reluctant to call the movies that were based on Dick's works "adaptations". They are certainly inspired by Dick's stories, and used some of his characters and ideas, but they changed so much that the source material is barely recognizable. That doesn't mean they are necessarily bad movies - it just means that there is much less Dick inside them than people tend to think.

Dick was wildly imaginative and deeply disturbed, and he also managed to stand with one leg in the depths of pulp, and with the other in serious intellectual, philosophical, and partly religious research. The movie adaptations of his stories focus on the imagination and the pulp aspects, and show only a glimpse of Dick's other characteristics. hey are good entertainment (mostly), but they don't compare in any way to the reality-shattering experience that reading one of his novels can be. On one hand, that's a pity, because there are now millions of people who _think_ they know Dick because they've seen the movies, but in reality they've only experienced a watered-down version of him. On the other hand, Hollywood may have bee right, and the watered-down version of Dick is probably much more mass-digestible than the real thing.

One thing to note is that Dick may have been discovered a bit too early for movie adaptations. In the 80s, the concept of having different levels of reality in a mass-produced movie was still very risky. Heck, even foregoing the obligatory happy end was considered risky (see the theatrical cut of Bladerunner, and Schwarzenegger's Total Recall). In the meantime, we've had movies like Matrix and Inception, we have a whole popular subculture of conspiracy theories, and the idea of a reality behind the reality, and perhaps another reality behind that, is now much more digestible than it was 30 years ago.

I'm kind of hopeful that the time might be right to show the world the "real" Philip K. Dick. There are ongoing negotiations about a "Ubik" movie (imho his best book), and depending on how that's done, it could be really good. If the audience could handle Inception, then it can handle a version of Ubik that's not massively watered down.

Entirely jacking the thread here (though also a fan of PKD) but this amused me a great deal!

Edit: and with that i hit rep#100 - time to sort out a giveaway or two!
On the note of the TV show - I'm dubious - particularly with Scott producing. Just like Spielberg and Lucas, nobody is holding him back anymore and he makes drivel.

Do you think the 'style' of "A Scanner Darkly" helped or hurt it? It definitely made me feel like I was on something but I don't know of that was the intent. And how is it Keanu Reeves is only convincing when he plays a drug addict!?

Both, I think. The rotoscoping did enhance the, hmm, "artistic value" of the movie, and it's artistically fitting - for a movie that deals with drug addiction and substance abuse - to have a somewhat surreal visual style. On the other hand, it made me feel detached from the characters. I tend to be be very attentive to small details in an actor's facial expression, and the rotoscoping smudged many of those minute details that I'd usually latch on. And that hurt this movie specifically, because as someone who has zero personal experience with substance abuse (I haven't even smoked a cigarette in my life), I find it hard to relate to large parts of the story already.

So, "A Scanner Darkly" is (perhaps ironically, considering the weirdness of many of Dick's other stories) probably the one work of his that I can relate the least to, and it was filmed in a manner that made that even harder. The result is a movie that I find still enjoyable, but that also leaves me with the impression that it somehow simply wasn't meant for me. :)

pffhahaha

No worries about jacking the thread since there is really only an announcement with no details to mull over at the moment :) It all depends on execution - if it is an adaptation I expect it to at least keep the spirit or overall thrust of the original source material with enough of the major plot points and characters intact for it to be recognizable; if it is inspired by, that's fine and I have no expectations about what is kept or thrown out. :) Loose adaptation is somewhere in between and in general how I feel about what is changed is if it works better that way in the adaptation - execution. SyFy is variable in its execution, but they are capable of producing really good mini-series. I loved the two Dune mini-series they did and even thought they were quite faithful adaptations. I like Man in the High Castle, but I agree it could be tough to adapt too faithfully. Though we'll see, I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised. :) Well Scott could always be a bit hit or miss. He's brilliant when he's got a good script, his directing is fantastic. Unfortunately he's chosen a few bad scripts (e.g. Prometheus) and screwed with one (e.g. Robin Hood). Spielberg still makes good movies e.g. Lincoln - I can't personally comment on Tintin or War Horse but they're both well reviewed. Yes Indy 4 was bad, but so was Indy 2 (I consider the Indy movies to be the inverse of the ST movies were every odd movie is good). He's allowed to make a few bad movies. :) Lucas was always a better idea man than executioner of said ideas and hadn't directed or written the script himself since New Hope. When I try to forget the horrid dialogue, I think the basic story concepts of the prequels are not bad, more galling they might've been great except for the execution ... the really bad execution.