How Much More Dick Is There?

The paid writers over at io9.com are running a Which Author Should Replace Philip K Dick As Hollywood's Idea Spigot poll. The first line of copy reads:

"As prolific as Philip K. Dick was, Hollywood still may find itself running out of his books and stories to film at some point."

Well that got me to thinking, and thinking kinda hurt, so I grabbed a calculator and did some computin':

They've made nine PKD works into films in the last 25 years (1982-2007):

Blade Runner
Impostor
Paycheck
Total Recall
Barjo
A Scanner Darkly
Minority Report
Screamers
Next

That's roughly one film every 2.7777 years, and there are 150 or so short stories and 55 novels (minus the nine already made - though they could always remake some of them) equaling 196 potential adaptations. At that rate we won't run out of Dick adaptations for 544 years. So perhaps I will see an Iain M Banks adaptation in the future (yes I know about Complicity but nobody else does so it doesn't count ) but it will be 2554 and I'll just be a head in a jar. I'm a pre-cog and I can tell you they will definitely still be making movies in the twenty sixth century. Of course Dick's work enters public domain - unless Disney's lawyer's, or VALIS, or VALIS's lawyers intervene - sometime around 2032, so it's safe to assume the pace will pick up before that event horizon. I think they're making four or five right now.

And why didn't io9 include Lucius Shepard on the list? I would have picked him; plus I personally know a Hollywood director that is trying to option a couple of his stories, and I don't know that many Hollywood directors.

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