A Scanner Darkly (2006)

[Dave]

Warner Brothers Options Philip K. Dick's Scanner.

Warner Brothers has acquired the film rights to Philip K. Dick's semi-autobiographical novel A Scanner Darkly for Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's production company, Section 8, Variety reported. The book tells the story of Bob Arctor, a man in the grip of drug dementia whose delusions prevent him from discerning between his day job as a narcotics officer and his paranoid alter ego, Fred, who's submersed in the addict's lifestyle, the trade paper reported. No director is attached, but sources told Variety that the film is a possible candidate for either computer or traditional animation.

The proposed movie had been set up at Muse Productions, where producer Chris Hanley had attached Leonardo DiCaprio and for a time courted music-video director Chris Cunningham to develop it as his first feature, the trade paper reported. Those people are no longer involved.

 

[Dave]

Keanu Reeves to Star In Scanner

Variety has reported that Keanu Reeves will star in this:

from SciFi Wire

Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly, based on a Philip K. Dick novel, for Warner Independent Pictures, Variety reported. Richard Linklater (School of Rock) is in talks to direct, the trade paper reported. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's Section 8 will produce.

A Scanner Darkly will employ the same technology Linklater used in Waking Life: It will be shot live-action, then animated, the trade paper reported.

The story takes place in the future, where undercover agents change their faces along with their identities. Reeves plays one such officer, and his liberal ingestion of the drug Substance D causes him to develop a split personality, the trade paper reported.

My father has been in an animation shot in this way (nothing big, it was a historical piece called 'The Hand and the Word' and was being shown at the Baltic Flour Mills art gallery in Gateshead.)

But it seemed to be difficult for them to get the mouths in sync with the dialogue when animating this way, and as a result the final product looks pretty poor IMHO. There seems to be more films made like this though, I just saw a trailer for something called 'The North Pole Express' before Scooby Doo 2. I can't really see the point. If they are filming anyway, just do a film. It can't be a cheaper option either. Apart from being able to show a drug-users trips in 'A Scanner Darkly', it wouldn't really have any other redeeming qualities.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly

Hmf.

After starring in that big, shiny trilogy that blisfully ripped off Philip K Dick's ideas and themes, wooden face is planning to take the attack closer to the source. OK, I'm being biased, just check this out:

Reeves Stars In Scanner
[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly, based on a Philip K. Dick novel, for Warner Independent Pictures, Variety reported. Richard Linklater (School of Rock) is in talks to direct, the trade paper reported. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's Section 8 will produce.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]A Scanner Darkly will employ the same technology Linklater used in Waking Life: It will be shot live-action, then animated, the trade paper reported.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans Serif]The story takes place in the future, where undercover agents change their faces along with their identities. Reeves plays one such officer, and his liberal ingestion of the drug Substance D causes him to develop a split personality, the trade paper reported.[/font]

Taken from: http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2004-03/30/10.30.film

 

[Brian G Turner]

Re: Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly

Thanks for that.

 

[Foxbat]

Re: Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly

I look forward to this one.

It seems that Dick is definitely 'the new black' for filmmakers. Hoepfully one day my favourite Dick novel will make it to celluloid (The Man In the High Castle).

 

[Dave]

I miss-understood earlier reports -- only parts of the film will be animated from film. I expect those are the drugged scenes.

from SciFi Wire

Scanner Cast Fills Out

Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochran will join Keanu Reeves in A Scanner Darkly, the Warner Independent Pictures movie based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Variety reported. Richard Linklater will direct and wrote the adaptation.

Linklater will shoot the actors in scenes that will later be turned into animation, much as he did with Waking Life, the trade paper reported.

Section 8 partners George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh are producing, along with Jonah Smith and Palmer West, whose company Thousand Words is co-financing the film with WIP, the trade paper reported. Tommy Pallotta and Anne Walker McBay are also producing. Bob Sabiston is animation director, a job he held on Waking Life.

Reeves plays an undercover drug officer in the future who becomes addicted and develops a split personality.

 

[Dave]

from SciFi Wire

Scanner Aims For Laughs

Richard Linklater, who is directing a film adaptation of SF author Philip K. Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that he's mining the unexpected comedic potential of the late writer's work. "Philip K. Dick is very funny," Linklater said in an interview. "You wouldn't know it necessarily from the movies that have been filmed on his stories and books, but I've always thought Dick was hilarious. It's very dark comedy, a funny sensibility in so much of his stuff. So I'm going for that. And it's a good, creepy, timely story."

Dick's novel tells the story of a future in which America has lost the war on drugs. Keanu Reeves plays a narcotics officer seeking a drug dealer who turns out to be a alternate version of himself. Since Scanner was a novel, Linklater feels the film will be more faithful than those based on Dick's short stories.

"I thought that my character, as drawn, was really at the front of the investigation and would be interacting with these people who had just returned to Earth, having disappeared for a long time," McKenzie said. "They're now integrating back into society. I felt the human stories of these people, the impact of returning to Earth on their lives and on them as people, were really interesting to me."

"I'm trying to tell the story he told," Linklater said. "No one else has really tried to do that too much, because what they’ve usually done is taken an idea, like the core idea, and then they usually put it into a genre and make it work in a more genre-typical sense. Some really great movies have been made from that stuff. But that wasn't my take on this movie, because it's not really an action film. It's primarily a character piece." Warner Independent Pictures will release A Scanner Darkly in the fall of 2005

"Philip K. Dick is very funny"

I've read a lot of PKD though admittedly not 'A Scanner Darkly'. There is a lot of humour in them. The idea of 'Perky Pat' and such can never be taken completely seriously, and among all the post-apocalyptic stories there is some genuine humour, but none of them were out-and-out comedies. I like what Linklater says in the finally paragraph though.

No one else going to comment on this film?

'BladeRunner', 'Total Recall', 'Minority Report'... this film has got to have a good chance of being a huge success.

Or, does the fact that it is not an action film make it less commercial?

 

[stencyl]

A Scanner Darkly

I thought this had a real god chance to be a great film when I saw that Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich) had a script written for it. He seemed like a perfect fit for the film.

It now looks like they trawhed the script and Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused) has rewritten it and is directing it too.

I ould have liked to see the Kaufman script used.

 

[stencyl]

A Scanner Darkly

It looks like this one has been pushed back to 2006.

If anyone is interested, there is a teaser trailer:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/

 

[Mighty mouse]

A Scanner Darkly

Not since that tour de force in depression, Irvine Walsh's Acid House, have I felt the joi de vive sap out of me like water emptying from a bath. Four stoners in a house one of whom is a cop (Reeves) grind with increasing dysfunction to their inevitable end.
The characters are perfectly drawn (Philip K. Dick wrote it in 1977 nine years after 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep', when it is alleged he was suffering from chemically induced paranoid schizophrenia). The performances are perfectly nuanced (especially Robert Downey as a hard motor mouth chemical head). The conversations and events encapsulate druggy life so well you can almost smell the vomit.
Whilst waiting in the foyer afterwards for my friend to throw up, two middle aged ladies totted past, one remarking "well that was certainly different". The attendants removed several people with slashed wrists.
If you go to see it check you seat for used needles.

 

[Thadlerian]

This is the one made with rotoscoping, isn't it? It would be interesting to watch it, but who knows when it'll arrive in Norway...

 

[movielad]

Well, IGN have the first 24 minutes of the film on their site. I would post a link, but I don't have 15 posts to my name yet. Best to use Google to search for "a scanner darkly 24 minutes" and it should be the first link it comes across.

M.

 

[Highlander II]

I've merged about 5 threads on this topic into one. None of them had large numbers of posts and merging the threads doesn't seem to have 'jostled' the post order too much.

Carry on...

 

[Paige Turner]

Okay, is ANYBODY impressed with rotoscoping? Time was, it was a reviled and mocked cheap short cut for people who didn't know how to animate—"We'll just shoot live film and trace over it with felt pens." And now a computer does the tracing for you. That's some advance. (I say sarcastically)

I actually paid money to go see Waking Life, but silly me, I forgot to drop acid, and had to sit through the whole thing waiting to be entertained. If they would DO something with the rotoscoping, trick it out, distort it, introduce strange elements, get all "Yellow Submarine," ANYTHING— but it just lays there like a dead trout until it's time to go home. What a waste of time, money, talent(?), effort, and air.

 

[roddglenn]

I saw this at the Tyneside Cinema a couple of weeks ago. I was very impressed with it as a whole. Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jnr were top notch, as was Winona Ryder and Woody Harleson. The rotoscoping works very well and the acting and music score are both very good.

 

[AE35Unit]

A Scanner Darkly

We just rented this from Blockbuster(other half works there) but I wasn't aware it existed until I heard about it on here! I knew about the book but haven't read it so I have no idea what to expect,but it seems to be about drugs and paranoia and I hope there's more to it than that. From the cover it seems to be done in cartoon style,like Sin City? I was going to ask if its as good as the book but thats rather a silly question as they never are!

 

[Thadlerian]

It's done with rotoscoping; filming, and then drawing on top. I've only seen the trailer, but the result looked pretty cool.

 

[Stenevor]

Its pretty good though Im not sure how easy it would have been to follow had I not already read and enjoyed the book a couple of times. The cocaine recipe, paranoid car journey and bike gears sections always make me laugh.

 

[unclejack]

It's a really good movie, I have to admit that it wasn't what I was expecting though. I rented it because the trailer looked trippy, I didn't know anything about the plot regarding drugs and everything, which is fine I just wasn't expectin it.

 

[gully_foyle]

I haven't read the book, but it the film had a typically Dicksian paranoia and twist to it. I really enjoyed it as it is.