jebmo’s posthaven

Philip K. Dick is responsible for some of science fiction’s most iconic movies, such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall, and some of his short stories will be the basis for a new anthology show called Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. The first trailer for the show has arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be just as weird as the stories it’s based on.

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams will consist of ten episodes, each of which will be based off of a selection of the author’s short stories. The show will star an array of recognizable actors, such as Benedict Wong, Steve Buscemi, Anna Paquin, Terrance Howard, and Cranston himself. This first trailer promises a really surreal sci-fi series. There’s empty cities, pig men, creepy children in a forest, robots, and quite a bit more.

Dick earned a reputation as a prolific storyteller who often explored themes of authority, alternate universes, and the uncertain state of reality, and this show looks like it really captures the spirit of those stories. The trailer shows off characters who discover that their parents are aliens, realize they have lost memories, and or that there are alternate worlds. The show also appears to nicely follow Channel 4’s other science fiction anthology show, Black Mirror, which ended up moving to Netflix in 2015. Amazon is also home to another Philip K. Dick adaptation, The Man in the High Castle, about an alternate world in which the Allies lost World War II.

Sony Pictures and the UK’s Channel 4 announced last year that they were teaming up to create the show, with Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, Justified’s Michael Dinner, and Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D. Moore producing. The show will be distributed in the United States by Amazon Video, but interestingly, our first look at the show comes not from Amazon, but from Australian streaming company Stan.

There’s no indication when the show will be released for US, European, or Australian audiences, other than “soon.”