Spotnitz Talks Bringing ‘High Castle’ To Life

Amazon appears to be coming out swinging in recent times with their streaming service, with ventures like this (‘The Man in the High Castle’) but also purchasing the services of Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond and giving them a $250 million budget to film a successor to Top Gear.

The Man in the High Castle tells the story of what the world might have looked like had the Axis powers won the war.

Executive Producer/showrunner Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files) spoke about how much discussion they had about how society would have developed differently if we’d lost World War II, saying:

“Obviously, we started with an alternative history that is in the novel. And, then, honestly, the biggest challenge was finding the visual alternative history, and that was something the pilot director, David Semel, confronted, because we knew from the pilot on we were establishing the rules of this world and we needed to honor them however many years this show went forward. So that does come down to hairstyles, wardrobe, types of vehicles. You know, there’s a very big shot of Time Square very early in the pilot episode. Well, what would Time Square look like if we didn’t live in a corporate capitalist society? What would it look like if the Nazis had proceeded for another 17 years ruling the world? What would their values be? What would their commercial values be? Would there be cars with fins? Would you have a kind of space age optimism in the design of home appliances? So there’s literally thousands of props and set design and costume and hair design issues that David Semel and, then, our series director, Dan Percival, have been on the front lines of deciding.”

Our review of the pilot episode was positive, check it out here.