Bryan Cranston to make (electric) dreams of a Philip K. Dick series come true

By Alex McLevy | May 10, 2016 | 4:02pm

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Now that he’s played Lyndon B. Johnson enough times to have sufficiently slaked his thirst for power, Bryan Cranston has decided to go the opposite direction, and question the ethical ramifications of power itself. This is, of course, somewhat akin to the philosophical investigation of statism vs. anarchism that occurs in Philip K. Dick‘s short story, “The Last Of The Masters.” And that ability to find an analogue to just about any real-life scenario with one of Dick’s short stories may be why Cranston has jumped on his latest project: Digital Spy reports the actor is set to executive produce Electric Dreams: The World Of Philip K. Dick, a 10-part anthology series based on the author’s short stories, for the U.K.’s Channel 4. He’ll also be acting on the show, because Cranston wants to be the face of all aspects of this assignment, not unlike the titular creation from Dick’s story, “The Mold Of Yancy.”

An equally big draw for genre nerds, however, may be the other name attached to this project: Cranston’s co-exec producer Ronald D. Moore, who is also writing the series. Moore, who earned critical plaudits for his excellent cult sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, calls Dick’s short stories “a treasure trove of material for artists to draw from.” Sort of like history itself, from which the desperate Terran System draws Thomas Cole into the present to deliver a faster-then-light bomb in the gripping read, “The Variable Man.” And like Dick’s stories, each episode of the series will be a standalone narrative, “contemporised for global audiences,” which is probably a way of saying there will be more cell-phone-style technology and prettier people on the show. No word on when it will debut, but it’s going to have some stiff competition in the dystopian near-future sci-fi anthology series game from Black Mirror.