Amazon Announces Man in the High Castle Television Pilot

This one was too weird to pass up: Amazon has announced they’re adapting Philip K. Dick’s classic The Man in the High Castle for their upcoming pilot season:

Based on Philip K. Dick’s Hugo-award-winning tale of the same name, the Ridley Scott-produced spy drama The Man in the High Castle takes on the alternative timeline of what would have happened if the Allied Powers lost World War II. The hour-long pilot will take place 20 years after the war and will have the world split between the two Axis Powers, Japan and Germany, and will star Alexa Davalos, Luke Kleintank, Rupert Evans, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Joel De La Fuente, Rufus Sewell, and DJ Qualls. David Semel will direct the pilot with a script written by Frank Spotnitz. Scott will executive produce alongside David W. Zucker, Jordan Sheehan, Stewart Mackinnon, Christian Baute, Isa Dick Hackett, Kalen Egan, and Christopher Tricarico.

What’s with the mad rush to get SF television shows on the air? We’ve heard in the past year alone announcement/development deals for The Expanse, Redshirts, Foundation, Lock In, Ancillary Justice and more. After years of essentially ignoring science fiction, networks now can’t get enough. I fear, though, this is just a matter of Hollywood following the herd. One network announces a new SF series, and everyone has to rush to get their own just in case these are successful. Expect a lot of these shows to never make it to air, and, if they do, to get cancelled quickly.

Still, it’s an interesting time for SF fans. I can’t imagine The Man in the High Castle as a successful series: the whole Nazi’s win WWII is pretty intense for television, and it’s not like Dick’s works are known for their easily-accessible plots. I’m also not sure how you extended a 300 page book into an opened-ended series. I just hope this entire crop of new SF shows doesn’t crash and burn, which would hurt the SF television market for years.

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