The works of late author Philip K. Dick have served as the basis of many films over the years, including BLADE RUNNER, TOTAL RECALL, MINORITY REPORT, A SCANNER DARKLY, and THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, and some of his stories have received television adaptations as well – most notably the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle, the pilot for which broke records for the streaming service.
Amazon is having so much success with The Man in the High Castle, it makes sense that they would want to expand their Philip K. Dick association by picking up the anthology series Electric Dreams. Coming from Sony Pictures TV and executive producers Ronald D. Moore, Michael Dinner, and Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, the first season of Electric Dreams will consist of ten stand-alone episodes, each based on one of Dick's short stories.
Moore and Dinner are writing the series with Tony Grisoni, Jack Thorne, Matthew Graham, David Farr, Dee Rees, and Travis Beacham.
Cranston (pictured above) will be starring in one of the episodes, and he has been joined in the cast by Greg Kinnear, Mireille Enos (below), Steve Buscemi, Timothy Spall, Jack Reynor, Benedict Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Jack Gore, Rebecca Manley, Anthony Boyle, Rudi Dharmalingam, Tuppence Middleton, Anne Reid, Ann Akin, Hayley Squires, Tom Brooke, Nicole Agada, Marko Leht, Matthew Raymond, Naveed Khan, Justin Butcher, Georgina Campbell, Bekka Bowling, Christopher Staines, and Malik Ibheis.
Kinnear leads the cast of the episode Father Thing, written and directed by Dinner, which
explores a world under attack by aliens. Enos will star opposite Kinnear as a mother who is being protected by son Charlie (Gore), who is the first to realize that humans are being replaced by dangerous monsters.
Buscemi stars in the episode Crazy Diamond, written by Grisoni, which centers on a man who
gets wrapped up in an illegal plan with an attractive but synthetic woman.
Written by Thorne and directed by Tom Harper, the episode called The Commuter will feature Spall as
an unassuming employee at a train station who is alarmed to discover that a number of daily commuters are taking the train to a town that shouldn’t exist. When he investigates for himself, he comes face to face with an alternate reality that forces him to confront his own struggles around his relationship with his wife Mary (Manley) and his very troubled son Sam (Boyle).
Reynor and Wong star in writer/director Farr's episode Impossible Planet as
two disillusioned, disenchanted and indifferent space tourism employees who take up an elderly woman’s (Chaplin) request for a trip back to Earth, the existence of which is a long-debunked myth. She appears easily confused, plus she’s rich – so, for the right payment, what’s the harm in indulging her fantasies? However, as their journey unfolds, their scam begins to eat away at them and they ultimately find themselves dealt a bittersweet surprise.
Maril Davis, James Degus, Isa Dick Hackett, Kalen Egan, Christopher Tricarico, David Kanter, Matt DeRoss, Lila Rawlings, Marigo Kehoe, and Kate DiMento are also executive producing Electric Dreams alongside Moore, Dinner, and Cranston.
The series is expected to air on Channel 4 in the UK later this year, and will presumably be available for viewing on Amazon around the same time.