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Halcyon Company Gets a Three-Year Deal on All Philip K. Dick Rights!

by Alex Billington
October 9, 2007
Source: Variety

The same production company that bought the rights to make three more Terminator movies just signed a three-year first-look deal on all projects based on the works of legendary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick! The Halcyon Company is their name and they're making a formidable impact on Hollywood with these two major deals. The arrangement allows them to develop adaptations for the big screen, small screen and other media platforms based on all works that have not previously been adapted. Could this be the sweetest deal anyone has made in Hollywood?

Dick wrote over 120 short stories and 45 novels, but Halcyon co-CEOs Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson know that, "only a tiny, tiny portion of his work has been tapped." In previous Hollywood history, Philip K. Dick adaptations have been pretty big hits: Blade Runner (adapted from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), Total Recall (adapted from "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"), Minority Report (adapted from "The Minority Report"), Paycheck (adapted from "Paycheck"), A Scanner Darkly (adapted from "A Scanner Darkly"), and Next (adapted from "The Golden Man").

Halcyon says that they're considering Dick's novel "Ubik" as the most likely candidate for adaptation first. "Ubik", one of TIME's All-Time Greatest 100 Novels, is about a group of psychics who are sent to investigate a group of rival psychics, but several of them are apparently killed by a saboteurs bomb. Much of the novel flicks between a number of equally plausible realities; the 'real' reality, a state of half-life and psychically manipulated realities.

Although Paycheck and Next were absolutely terrible films, the problems with those were the bad scripts and even worse directors. I think in the right hands, and I mean the perfect hands, Philip K. Dick stories could result in absolutely brilliant and beautiful films. Just look at Blade Runner - thanks to Ridley Scott! This sounds like one hell of a sweet deal because there are still a whole bunch of great Philip K. Dick stories to be adapted. And thankfully they'll be able to get their hands on every single one! At least for the next three years…

I'm very, very curious to see what The Halcyon Company is capable of. They're making such a powerful move in Hollywood, I just hope that the movies they're producing turn out to be fantastic.

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