Philip K. Dick's award-winning science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle will be adapted for the BBC by screenwriter and playwright Howard Brenton, Variety reports.

The writer, whose most recent work includes MI-5 (Spooks), will pen a four-part, four-hour miniseries co-produced by Ridley and Tony Scott's Scott Free Films, Headline Pictures and Electric Shepherd Productions, founded by Dick's daughters as the production arm of the late author's estate. Ridley Scott directed the 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner, loosely based on Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Published in 1962, The Man in the High Castle is about life under totalitarian Fascist imperialism in a world where Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany won World War II and are now superpowers entrenched in a Cold War, primarily in the former United States, which they've divided among themselves.