Blade Runner director Ridley Scott is to executive produce a four-part adaptation of The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick for BBC1.The script will be written by playwright and Spooks writer Howard Brenton, bringing Dick's Hugo-award winning story of an alternative timeline in which Axis forces defeated the Allies in the second world war to the small screen.
The Guardian reports the drama will be co-produced by Scott's independent production company Scott Free Films, makers of both Blade Runner and Gladiator.
The series is a co-production with Headline Pictures and Electric Shepherd, the production arm of the Philip K Dick Estate. Headline Pictures was set up by Stewart Mackinnon and Mark Shivas to produce high-quality television drama and feature films for the international market and their development slate also includes Reykjavik, a feature film with Ridley Scott attached, based on the end of the Cold War, and official Peter Pan sequel Peter Pan In Scarlet, written for the screen by Oscar-nominee Jeffrey Caine.
"I've been a lifelong fan of Philip K Dick," said Scott. "He is the master of creating worlds which not only spark the imagination but offer deeper commentary on the human condition."
In a 1976 interview for Hour 25, Dick, who was a regular guest on the show, said he planned to write a sequel novel to The Man in the High Castle: "And so there's no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending. It will segue into a sequel sometime."
Dick said that he had "started several times to write a sequel", but progressed little, because he was too disturbed by his original research for The Man in the High Castle and could not mentally bear "to go back and read about Nazis again."
• A Talk with Philip K. Dick (1976) - Hour 25 with Mike Hodel
Hour 25 hosted by Mike Hodel A Talk with Philip K. Dick 1976 Captured from (streaming media). Also available at www.philipkdick.com/media_audio.html
• Man in the High Castle Cover Gallery
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