About this episode
This episode explores the tumultuous production and themes of the science fiction film Minority Report, based on a Philip K. Dick short story.
In 1992, a little-known Philip K. Dick short story was optioned as a sequel to Total Recall , with Arnold Schwarzenegger set to reprise his role. After a decade of Hollywood turbulence, involving a studio bankruptcy, a directorial hand-off, and two blockbusters that kept getting in the way, Steven Spielberg was finally behind the camera on what would become one of the most visually inventive science fiction films ever made: Minority Report. A sequence of remarkable events would lead to Tom Cruise passing a script to Spielberg that kick-started a collaboration ten years in the making. Jan de Bont, fresh off Speed and Twister, was briefly attached as director before quietly fading from the project; and the delays caused by Mission: Impossible 2 and A.I. Artificial Intelligence paradoxically gave Spielberg and his team the time to make the film better, and make the film way more prescient than any other cinematic dystopian utopia future. In the world of Minority Report, predicting crime before it happens raises serious moral and ethical questions. The Precogs, while gifted, are treated more like tools than human beings, in a system that claims to prevent crime but at what cost to…
People in this episode
Host: Verbal Diorama
Topics covered
- science fiction
- film history
- Hollywood production
- ethical questions
- digital effects
- Philip K. Dick
Keywords
- Minority Report
- Philip K. Dick
- Steven Spielberg
- Tom Cruise
- science fiction
- film production
- ethical dilemmas
- digital effects
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Minority Report, Total Recall, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Mission: Impossible 2, Speed, Twister
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