We invite you to join us in a unique partnership—to see Luke Rhinehart’s classic novel THE DICE MAN become a film, and to share in the profits that such a film and its sequels will produce.
THE DICE MAN is a once-in-a-century publishing phenomenon. No book published in the 20th century has ever been rediscovered thirty years later and come to sell more books than it did on its original publication. In 1995, the BBC called THE DICE MAN “one of the fifty most influential books of the last half of the twentieth century,” and Loaded Magazine honored it in 1999 by naming it “Novel of the Century.” Last year the London Telegraph named it one of the 50 great cult books of the last hundred years. The Toronto Star named it one of the 20 great books of all time that has never made it into a film.
Although first published over 30 years ago, the book is currently selling more copies than ever and in more countries. New or original editions of THE DICE MAN have recently been published in the USA, the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Portugal, Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Malaysia. Negotiations are currently under way for sales in China and the Netherlands.
More than 30 different editions of the book have been published around the world in the last decade.
Interest in Luke’s dicing books and dicing projects began its amazing resurgence when the BBC broadcast Diceworld, a documentary about Luke and some of the people influenced by his novels. This resurgence has continued unabated to this day.
Among many recent dice-related media projects are The Diceman Travel Show; a six-part TV series entitled Dice; Dicelife: the Random Mind of Luke Rhinehart, a film made for UK’s Channel Four starring Luke himself; the hilarious play The Dice House, which received an enthusiastic reception in London’s West End in 2004 and was revived this year in London; and finally, an adaptation of THE DICE MAN for the French stage being made by French producer Eric Dupont and screenwriter and playwright Marc Gibaja.
In addition, over the years dozens of pieces of music have been inspired by Luke’s ideas, including “Six Different Ways” by The Cure; “Dice Man” by The Fall; “Random I Am” by Millencolin; “Slaughter Of The Soul” by At the Gates; “X, Y and Zee” by Pop Will Eat Itself; “Black Diary” by Jameson; and “Such a Shame” by Talk Talk.
The most amazing thing about this resurgence of interest in Luke’s work is that it is led by young people, with most all of Luke’s fan mail comes from people under the age of 25. Thus, the audience for any film about the Diceman will include, but not be limited to, today’s teens and twenty-somethings — the most important film demographic.
PAST HISTORY OF TRYING TO MAKE THE FILM.
After the book was first published in a dozen countries (“the most fashionable novel of the early ’70s”—Time Out), in 1972 the movie rights were sold outright to Paramount. For the next 30 years, although interest in making the film remained strong, especially among actors (Roy Scheider, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Nicholas Cage), and half a dozen screenplays were written for Paramount (one by Luke himself), the project never got past the screenplay stage.
Examining the scripts commissioned by Paramount it is clear that after the first script, Paramount executives became leery of basing a film closely on the book. They wanted a softer more mainstream film, one that didn’t seem to support dicing as a provocative idea about leading a more interesting life, but rather rejected dicing as immoral, even if it provided some fun along the way. As one screenplay morphed into another, successive screenwriters used less and less of the novel. This process reached its climax four years ago when Paramount commissioned a screenplay from Dan and Mark Waters (The Spiderwick Chronicles) that contained not a single character or a single scene from the Dice Man novel. That screenplay was shelved like the others, and Paramount has not made a film of THE DICE MAN.
Why then should one think there is any better chance today to make a film of THE DICE MAN if Paramount has failed for 37 years? Two reasons:
First of all, as seen above, interest in THE DICE MAN is at an all-time high with tens of millions of fans of the book around the world. In addition, there are talent, production companies, and investors who have contacted Luke over the last two years ready and enthusiastic about moving to buy the film rights away from Paramount and make the film that the world wants made.
Secondly, there is, for the first time, a new screenplay that not only faithfully captures the spirit of the novel but tells a story clearly different from all the screenplays that preceded it (a total of more than fifteen), and one that lends itself to sequels, something that not one of the previous scripts had done.
THE NEW SCREENPLAY
Over the years Luke has written several screenplays based on THE DICE MAN, but only in 2007 did he come to realize that he and the other screenwriters who have tackled it all felt that Luke should have a change of heart about dicing in the third act, even though this did not occur in the novel itself. Such seemed to be the logical three act story structure recommended for films: discovery, fulfillment, reversal or second thoughts. It is also what Paramount always insisted on for a middle-of-the-road “moral” studio film.
The novel itself does not have such a structure. In the novel Luke dices on to the very end, more and more madly and with more comically dire consequences. Yet it has always been assumed, by Paramount and even by Luke, that that would not work in a film. It is forgotten that it is Luke’s dicing on even at the end of the novel that makes him a kind of superhero, larger than life, and attracts young readers to the book in a way that a conventional novel would not. It is this that has turned the book into an international cult novel. Had the protagonist recanted and abandoned dicing, the provocative nature of the novel, and of the film, would be lost.
THE DICE MAN is not a conventional novel. Most novels are interested in the protagonist’s background and in his psychological development. THE DICE MAN isn’t. The reader doesn’t learn a single thing about Luke’s father, mother or siblings, or Lil’s. Luke has no insights about himself and doesn’t change. Some readers might feel that a better novel would have shown Luke suffering real hurt and having insights into the limitations, if not evils, of dicing. But it is time to realize that it is a STRENGTH of the book that it doesn’t do these things.
Don Quixote and Luke are fictional characters with a lot in common. They are both “mad” idealists who don’t accept the reality that everyone else does and are convinced that their ideals should be adopted by the world. Their actions are destructive to themselves and to others. They each repeatedly suffer in comic ways from their inspired mad actions. We identify with them because their vision, though almost insane, is much more interesting and entertaining than most of everyday reality.
Late in his life Cervantes wrote a chapter in which Don Quixote is awakened from his madness and realizes that all that he has done has been blind and foolish and he repents and apologizes. Critics and readers agree that it is a chapter that never should have been written. Readers don’t want a sane Don Quixote; they want a mad and loveable one.
So too with Luke. The novel is much more thought-provoking and fun because Luke at the end is still “mad” and still being the Luke that has entertained us. The novel might be a “better” novel if the story had a beginning, middle and end that resolves all the issues, but it probably wouldn’t be . . . wouldn’t be . . . what millions of readers are happy it is.
So a film that really captures the novel must do as the novel did: create a larger than life character who is idealistically mad, and madly entertaining.
THE DICE MAN is not a cult novel that appeals to sophisticated intellectuals; it is a cult novel that appeals to youth. It appeals to them because Luke is larger than life and at the end is continuing to thumb his nose at all establishments. The book shows the seemingly infinite possibilities of life—something very appealing to the young.
Finally, it is in the interest of whoever makes the film that it should leave our audience wanting a sequel. A film about some Joe Blow discovering dicing, using it to break away from his limitations, winning the girl, and giving up dicing, is not a film that leads to sequels. Yet that is the film that Paramount has always seemed to want to make. A film of THE DICE MAN should create the exact sort of superhero that the novel creates, and one whose further adventures will be of interest to viewers.
Daniel Millar, a successful Australian producer who wrote Luke out of the blue to ask to read the screenplay, immediately wrote:
I received the script today, locked myself in my office and spent the whole day reading. And what a fantastic script it is! Lil firing a gun furiously at Luke and him replying “Hey babe, you’re angry...” had me in absolute stitches. I’m going to give it a second read and then write out a few notes which I’ll send to you asap. All I’ll say for now is that this is a film that HAS to be made!
In a follow-up letter a couple of weeks later, he wrote (abridged):
The script is a near perfect adaptation of the novel. This is so close to the film which played out in my mind as I was reading the book.
And Andrew Quigley, a film editor and director, wrote:
WOW, what a fantastic screenplay of THE DICE MAN — it truly captures in shorthand what the book’s main drive is about for me. This draft is riveting, intriguing, shocking and exciting with some very funny and bizarre turning points and before you know it, you have become sucked into Luke’s world and engrossed with the emerging story. I stayed with Luke right through to the end, loving all the twists and turns. In particular, the germination of dice and Chance into wider society and then the story culminating in court with an unresolved end; chance has infiltrated every sphere, to be continued? Brilliant!
FRANCHISING AND MERCHANDISING
A major film about Luke that makes him a sort of comic “superhero” has two great commercial advantages.
First, it lends itself both to the creation of sequels, sequels both created specifically for the screen, and sequels based on books and screenplays that Luke has written about the characters in THE DICE MAN. He has written with friends two scripts that tell compelling dicing stories with the character Luke playing a major role, “Last Roll of the Dice” with Nick Mead, and “Dicelady” with Peter Forbes.
A film of THE DICE MAN would also lead to hundreds of merchandising opportunities not normally possible with most films. The book has a passionate readership and these fans and those of the film will be immensely interested in dice and dicing related products, from tee-shirts with logos such as “Die-ing is Fun” or “Anybody can be Anybody,” to video games, to new dicing-related music, to more dicegroups on U-Tube, Facebook, My Space and elsewhere, and even a clothing line that incorporates randomness. Moreover there are many commercial tie-ins possible. A half-dozen years ago Rolling Rock Beer took advantage of the interest in THE DICE MAN and dicing in the UK to run a series of TV ads in which characters in a bar were making dice decisions. Such could now be done with many products.
TEAM LUKE
We are forming a new Team Luke to approach Paramount with enough clout and enough money to convince them we are serious, and that at last a film of THE DICE MAN can be made. We hope to show Paramount that they can still participate in the success of the film by being its distributor and/or holding a small portion of the rights so that they can have their name on the film if they want it there.
We’re rollin’!!
A MOTION PICTURE ABOUT
THE DICE MAN
(About fucking time)
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