Saturday, September 15, 2007

PKD Article in the LA Times

In the first falling drop of what is sure to be a monsoon of coverage for Blade Runner's 25th anniversary, the LA Times has an article today about Dick's cinematic legacy. "The Legacy of Everybody's Favorite Sci-Fi Writer" by Geoff Boucher details a couple of very interesting PKD projects currently in production:

"Right now, Hackett said, there are six film projects that are in various stages of negotiation or development, including advanced talks that would finally bring one of his signature works, "Ubik," to life as a feature film.

Hollywood creators have flirted with "Ubik," the 1969 novel, more than any other single work in the Dick library. Its tale of skirmishing telepaths and slippery reality earned it a spot on Time magazine's 2005 list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.

There are also strong pushes being made into video games and graphic novels, and a audio-book collection of his complete short stories is expected to launch in 2008. There's also a limited series for television written by David Hayter (a screenwriter on "X-Men" and the upcoming "Watchmen") that pulls together a dozen or so of Dick's short stories within a narrative frame."

Hmmm, PKD on television eh? What could go wrong?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some of Dick's short stories would've made great Twilight Zone episodes, I think. Human Is, Adjustment Team and Beyond Lies the Wub spring to mind initially. I wonder if the proposed TV show is going to be reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. This 'narrative frame' sounds intriguing, too.

Notice how I avoid answering your final question from the post, Ragle!

Anonymous said...

Talking of TV, recently reading Sutin's collection of PKD writings, I was stunned at how bad some of Dick's proposed TV scripts were, such as the one for Mission:Impossible. Thank God, no-one ever took him up on them.
-giospurs (my Google/Blogger account won't work after I deleted all my cookies)