Scanner Darkly Wraps Production

Warner Independent Pictures has completed production in Austin, Texas on the interpolated rotoscoped feature A SCANNER DARKLY, starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Rory Cochrane. Richard Linklater directed the film as well as adapted it from the novel by Philip K. Dick. The film is a Section Eight/Detour Filmproduction. The animation technology was first employed in Linklater's 2001 film WAKING LIFE.

The film is set in suburban Orange County, California in a future where America has lost the war on drugs. When one reluctant undercover cop (Reeves) is ordered to start spying on his friends, he is launched on a paranoid journey into the absurd, where identities and loyalties are impossible to decode.

The film is produced by Anne Walker-McBay, Tommy Pallotta, Jonah Smith, Palmer West and Erwin Stoff. Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, Jennifer Fox, Ben Cosgrove and John Sloss are exec producers. Jonah Smith and Palmer West's Thousand Words is co-financing the film" with Warner Independent Pictures. The film is set for release in fall of 2005.

"There is a unique power to SCANNER, as there is to all of this author's outstanding works," said Linklater. "I was compelled to pursue my dream of getting this novel turned into a movie, no matter how long it took."

"Five years ago, Philip K. Dick's vision of the future seemed at the very least a bit fanciful or paranoid, but now it seems like a highly plausible possibility," said Mark Gill, president of Warner Independent. "That topicality, combined with a stellar group of actors, blue chip producers and a director at the top of his career -- introducing us to a new look at the art form of film -- make A SCANNER DARKLY irresistible."

Warner Independent Pictures, founded in August 2003, finances, produces, acquires and will theatrically distribute up to 10 feature films per year largely budgeted under $20 million. It is a Warner Bros. Ent. Co. based on the studio lot in Burbank.