Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Brave New World

8/6/09 - Ridley Scott is taking on a high-profile sci-fi project, producing and directing a film version of Aldous Huxley's dystopian SF novel Brave New World, The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz blog reported.  Scott will produce with Leonardo DiCaprio, who will also star.  The studio has brought on Apocalypto scribe Farhad Safinia to pen the script; he's expected to be working shortly.  Scott and DiCaprio also will produce via their respective Scott Free and Appian Way banners, with Michael Costigan also producing for Scott Free and George DiCaprio producing at Appian. Peter Cramer is overseeing for Uni.  Scott has mentioned casually in interviews that he's interested in the 1931 novel, which Appian Way owns, prompting a flurry of rumors on sci-fi and other blogs over the past year. But the studio details as well as DiCaprio's personal involvement always have been murky.  Now, with a writer on board and Scott Free and Appian execs meeting frequently during the past six months, the project has more momentum, though several people familiar with it emphasize that it remains at the development stage.  Brave New World is set in the year 2540 (632 A.F. in the book) in London, an egalitarian dystopian society of strictly controlled reproduction, consumerism and sexual promiscuity, seen at the time as partly a critique of the emerging Americanization of world culture.

10/10/08 - Blade Runner director Ridley Scott talked with io9 about his proposed film adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.  Scott said, “…it was Leonardo DiCaprio's production company that came to me with that. And it's a big challenge, in fact. Because when you look at the two players or visionaries in the field, at that moment it would be Huxley and it would be Orwell and that was 60 or 75 years ago. They were predictions in a way, they weren't aware at the time, but they were predictions. One could argue that Orwell kind of got there first and Orwell was closer to the notion of ‘big brother,’ with the Cold War. But I don't think that's it, I think that big brother may be the internet. I don't know but I think that's the way it's going to go. And so the Aldous Huxley's novel literally what is called Brave New World that's a very hard adaptation. So we're still dancing with that one, but it's a challenge.”

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