Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' Is Heading to the Big Screen

I think Darren Aronofsky deserves a second shot to a sci-fi project that is not dismembered half way through like the fountain. I can see him takin this on.

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To be honest, I don't see this being movie material. It's too "heady" and surreal. Kinda in the Paprika/Akira sense. And what made the book so great was the last sentence. That can be captured in film, but how do you do it without it feeling like a cheap/dirty trick like Next ended up?

If it's inevitable though...

In terms of an *adaptation*... You gave the hint... Charlie Kaufman!

-Pie

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Aronofsky or Gondry would be good. Dick actually wrote a screenplay for Ubik, I would hope that they're using this screenplay as a basis for the adaptation.

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Just to clarify, "Dick Hackett" is the unhyphenated compound surname of one of PKD's daughters, Isa (Isolde) Dick Hackett; PKD's fourth wife was Nancy Hackett.

My compliments on your choice to show an image of the original 1969 Doubleday hardcover at the top of this post. (I've had the first-edition - coverless - mass-market paperback since about 1971.)

I see EatingPie's point above regarding the last sentence of the book. Untranslatable to film. (I wonder how PKD ended his 1974 screenplay? I've only seen an excerpt of it, not the ending.) This is one reason I'd prefer an adaptation of Now Wait for Last Year, whose ending would work on film, I think.

Both books also have an ironic sense of humor (in Ubik, this is especially true in the early scenes of Joe Chip in his apartment) that would be a welcome part of any PKD-based movie but which is pretty much missing from those adaptations that I've seen.

One last point: I have avoided seeing The Matrix (and sequels) because I've long been under the impression that its writers ripped off a central plot device from Ubik. If true, might this not hurt the chances of a Ubik movie succeeding in the marketplace? That is, might it be seen as copying The Matrix (even though the reverse was actually the case)?

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I'm a self-professed "Dick-head" and, no, I don't think there's anything to worry about with Ubik vs. The Matrix movies. Ubik would work best as a modest production that is targeted to the indie/arthouse theater circuit, like the way Scanner Darkly was produced and marketed.

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I've always felt that the book deserved a much better ending than the one it got, so I'll go with Chris Nolan. If there's a guy who knows how to turn a last-act anti-climax into a meaningful experience and hit you over the head with an unexpected epiphany, it's him.


Fanshawe
http://www.cinemarealm.com

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