Back in October, it was announced that The Halycon Co. (the guys behind the new Terminator series of films) had struck a massive deal with the Phillip K. Dick estate to have the option of bringing each and everyone of the popular author’s unpublished works to the big screen.
However that deal must have never been finalised because Variety today report that Ubik, Dick’s 1969 novel which was to be the first adapted from The Halycon Co. has been put into development at Celluliod Dreams and should begin pre-production early next year.
The novel actually set in the early 90’s is one of Dick’s most famous un-filmed works and has become almost notorious because of a big screen attempt in 1974 when French film-maker Jean-Pierre Gorin was set to direct an adaptation based from a screenplay that Dick was said to have written in ONE drug filled night, but it never got off the ground.
The beginning of a massive long plot synopsis is below, but you can read the rest from Wiki…
The protagonist is Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for Glen Runciter’s “prudence organization,” which employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers (for instance, an anti-telepath can prevent a telepath from reading a client’s mind). Runciter runs the company with the assistance of his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of “half-life,” a form of cryonic suspension that gives the deceased person limited consciousness and communication ability.
The cryogenic suspended state is similar to the idea used in Vanilla Sky and is said to deal with notions of reality and what it means to be real.
With the right director and the right crew, Dick’s novels have the potential to be some of the greatest works of cinematic sci-fi history (Minority Report, Blade Runner). Would love to see either Spielberg or Scott return to the genre for this but it ain’t never gonna happen sadly.
11 Comments
Ubik is just awesome, but I think the only way it could be achieved on screen would be in a similar rotoscoping animation style to A Scanner Darkly.
I’d love to see Ubik as a film, but yes, it would take the right people and particular genius to pull it off.
One drug-filled night? Phil spent three months on that screenplay, and he never took so much as an aspirin! Idiots!
You’ll believe anythgin if it’s sensational enough!
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Yes, one drug filled night! I don’t care how long it took him after to print and type but the synopsis was carved up in one night!! That is how the man lived at times, don’t bring your puritan voodoo and try and mess with the legacy by this genius! Stay home and rock in your liquid paper plate world. D
oh, I see, you were there, you saw the whole thing, you lived with us in our tiny apartment, hiding inside the walls a la the third policeman, and you know everything — the “synopsis” was simply the scene with the explosion — the rest was the work of months
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i feel like the whole world is slowly catching up with me. I recognized P.K. D. ’s brilliance before I had completed puberty. Bought all his novels back when you could still find them in used bookstores. And Ubik was always my favorite. So, I am happy for Phil’s posthumus success, but also feel like my special favorite things are now the property of the whole world and somehow less “mine” now. Ubik the movie sure better be good though, or i’ll be pissed. And my anger will ripple forth into the cosmos, just as my excellent taste has, with much worse effects.
Hahaha… The exchange above is quite priceless in my opinion. :)
Tessa, if you’re really his ex-wife, you need to move on with your life. Do you honestly waste your time crawling the internet arguing with people who write shit about him? GOOD LUCK! Look at his works, they look like he’s Hunter S. Thompson’s brother, separated at birth. They even both use their middle initial. What was wrong with just Philip Dick?
oh yeahh? well your all wrong. And being a transdimensional hyperbeing with unlimited acess to Myst like puzzles and Jeopardy based trivia, I’d know!
Whadya think of that wise guy?
Don’t listen to him, he’s mad…
Not listening to anybody. Too busy writing books.
Ubik, Counter Clock-world, The three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Lies Inc. not to Mention short stories like The unreconstructed M etc. I hope this matter gets rsolved soon as I would dearly love to see Ubik as a film.
I have read a lot of science fiction and when you happen to stumble upon how great Dicks Imagination was and the subtlety of his stories ,the fallibility of the characters and the smallness of the world around them, all other writers pale into insignificance. This man dreams of worlds way beyond ours but without the ego of most writers out there. his inventiveness and surreallity are unique to say the least. I can’t think of another Sci Fi writer who isn’t in some way directly or indirectly borrowing from PKDick. I don’t mean to wax lyrical about him but simply he was the best and the Science Fiction Writers ” Science Fiction writer”
He set the benchmark pretty high