Syfy to Develop a 4-Hour Miniseries Adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle

IGN ^

[Perdogg]

Syfy has finalized a deal to adapt Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award-winning novel The Man In The High Castle into a 4-hour miniseries event with Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, Hunted) attached to write and serve as Executive Producer. Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions will produce the project with Headline Pictures, Electric Shepherd Productions and FremantleMedia International. Spotnitz will write the first two hours and supervise the writing of the second two hours.

[irishjuggler]

Love the book. Truly pioneering work in the “alternate history” genre.

[Vince Ferrer]

That was interesting. It seems the Wachowski “siblings” wrote the Matrix based upon Dick’s views.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Well if it is like most of the movies they have shown in the last ten years it will be crap with crappy special effects.

When the Si-fi channel first started I hoped they would show dozens of the old good and bad si-fi-horror movies from the last 90 years. Instead we got lots of new movies all with one basic plot and CGIs about as good as the Scooby Do movie.

[Perdogg]

The special effects should be kept to a minimum. I wonder how they are going to handle the sex in novel.

[Cronos]

thanks for the ping

[Drumbo]

You’re right, it sucked major wind but to do it right would have cost a lot.

I'm not so sure budget was the cause. They did an adequate job with the grail stones, the riverboat, the zeppelin and big ticket special effects like the dark tower. (I've seen enough low budget sci fi movies to excuse anything for a good story). It was the missing story elements and charterers that turned me off. If you don't have the cojones to tell the story Farmer wrote, why bother? Leaving Yeshewa out of the mix was a cop out imho to avoid angering viewers perhaps, but that was a major element of Farmer's extended series. And where was Herman Göring and cowboy actor Tom Mix? I didn't necessarily love Farmer's plots on a personal level (the Jesus stuff was disturbing), but, the Riverworld novels were still a major literary accomplishment and SyFy whittled away at so much of the story and charterers that it didn't even rise to the level of "Cliff's Notes". Although Man In The High Castle was relatively short compared to "Riverworld" it was not politically correct. I doubt a single charterer will utter the word "Jap".