The future keepers

This month, Hackett, who is 40 and lives in the Bay Area, joined Scott and much of the cast of "Blade Runner" at a gala premiere of the reconstituted version at the Venice Film Festival. The clamor of the international press and the ornate trappings of the theater on the Lido made for a surreal counterpoint to the sad California experience in the summer of 1982.

"I kept thinking back to how it was when I saw it that first time and how I had walked in with this little glimmer of hope that the movie would bring more attention to my dad and his writing. I loved the film myself, but I gave up that hope. And now it's all pretty amazing."

Hackett and her sister Laura Leslie are the principal players behind Electric Shepherd, the family's production company. The company, which is now opening an L.A. office, was created in 2005 partly out of frustration; after watching Hollywood disappointments such as "Screamers" and "Paycheck," the Dick brood decided they needed a stronger hand in future projects.

Right now, Hackett said, there are six film projects that are in various stages of negotiation or development, including advanced talks that would finally bring one of his signature works, "Ubik," to life as a feature film.

Hollywood creators have flirted with "Ubik," the 1969 novel, more than any other single work in the Dick library. Its tale of skirmishing telepaths and slippery reality earned it a spot on Time magazine's 2005 list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.

There are also strong pushes being made into video games and graphic novels, and a audio-book collection of his complete short stories is expected to launch in 2008. There's also a limited series for television written by David Hayter (a screenwriter on "X-Men" and the upcoming "Watchmen") that pulls together a dozen or so of Dick's short stories within a narrative frame.

Of all the percolating ventures, however, none is a higher priority than a biopic of Dick that is being penned now by screenwriter Tony Grisoni ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"); Oscar-nominated actor Paul Giamatti is the star and co-producer. Hackett said this week that the script will intertwine Dick's life story with scenes from his final and unfinished novel, "The Owl in Daylight," a typical Dick story in that it bundles up themes of the fantastic and the disaffected.