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Dark City (1998 film)

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dark City
A black poster. Above reads the lines: "Rufus Sewell", "Kiefer Sutherland",
"Jennifer Connelly", "and William Hurt". In the center, against a black background,
a man wearing a blue jacket is rested against an upright clock with Roman numerals
as big as him; the setup cast in a blue tint. His arms are outspread, and his head
is tilted back with his mouth agape. Behind the man and the clock is a dark city
skyline. Below them is the tagline, "They built the city to see what makes us tick.
Last night one of us went off." Below the tagline is the film title, "Dark City".
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Alex Proyas
Screenplay by
Alex Proyas
Lem Dobbs
David S. Goyer
Story by Alex Proyas
Produced by
Andrew Mason
Alex Proyas
Starring
Rufus Sewell
Kiefer Sutherland
Jennifer Connelly
Richard O'Brien
Ian Richardson
William Hurt
Cinematography Dariusz Wolski
Edited by Dov Hoenig
Music by Trevor Jones
Production
company
Mystery Clock Cinema
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date
February 27, 1998
Running time 100 minutes[1]
Countries
United States
Australia
Language English
Budget $27 million[2]
Box office $27.2 million[3]
Dark City is a 1998 neo-noir science fiction film directed by Alex Proyas and
starring Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard
O'Brien, and Ian Richardson. The screenplay was written by Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and
David S. Goyer. In the film, Sewell plays an amnesiac man who, finding himself
suspected of murder, attempts to discover his true identity and clear his name
while on the run from the police and a mysterious group known as the "Strangers".
[4]

Primarily shot at Fox Studios Australia, the film was jointly produced by New Line
Cinema and Proyas' production company Mystery Clock Cinema, and distributed by the
former for theatrical release. It premiered in the United States on 27 February
1998 and received generally positive critiques, but it was a box-office bomb. Roger
Ebert, in particular, supported the film, appreciating its art direction, set
design, cinematography, special effects, and imagination, and even recorded an
audio commentary for the film's home video release.

The film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and six
Saturn Awards. Some critics later noted Dark City's similarities to and influence
on the Matrix film series, whose first installment came out a year later,[5][6][7]
and the film is now widely considered a sci-fi cult classic.[8][9][10][11]

Concerned that audiences would not understand the film, New Line asked Proyas to
add an explanatory voice-over to the introduction, and he complied. When a
director's cut of the film was released in 2008, among the changes was the removal
of the opening narration.

Plot
John Murdoch awakens in a hotel bathtub, with amnesia. He receives a phone call
from Dr. Daniel Schreber, who urges him to flee the hotel to evade a group of men
who are after him. In the room, Murdoch discovers the corpse of a ritualistically
murdered woman along with a bloody knife. He flees the scene, just as a group of
pale men in trenchcoats ("the Strangers") arrive.

Police Inspector Frank Bumstead is looking for Murdoch as a suspect in a series of

murdered prostitutes, though Murdoch cannot remember killing anybody. Following
clues, Murdoch learns his own name and finds out he has a wife named Emma. When the
Strangers catch up with him, he shows he has the ability to alter reality at will,
which the Strangers can also do and refer to as "tuning", and he manages to use
these powers to escape.

Murdoch wanders the streets of the anachronistic city,[12] where nobody seems to
notice the perpetual nighttime. At midnight, he watches as everyone else falls
asleep and the Strangers have the city physically rearrange itself and, assisted by
Schreber, change the inhabitants' identities and memories. He learns that he came
from a coastal town called Shell Beach, which is familiar to everyone, though
nobody knows how to get there, and all of his attempts to visit are unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the Strangers inject a copy of the memories given to Murdoch into one of
their men, Mr. Hand, hoping it will help them predict Murdoch's movements and track
him down.

Inspector Bumstead eventually catches Murdoch, though he acknowledges that Murdoch

is most likely innocent, as by then he has his own misgivings about the nature of
the city. They confront Schreber, who explains that the Strangers, which are
extraterrestrials who use human corpses as their hosts, have a hive mind, and are
experimenting with humans to analyze individuality in hopes of making a discovery
that will help their race survive. Schreber also reveals that Murdoch is an anomaly
who inadvertently awoke when Schreber was in the middle of imprinting his latest
identity as a murderer.

Murdoch and Bumstead take Schreber and attempt to reach Shell Beach, but instead
end up at a poster for the town on a wall at the edge of the city. Frustrated,
Murdoch and Bumstead break through the wall, revealing outer space, just before
some of the Strangers, including Mr. Hand, arrive with Emma as a hostage. In the
ensuing fight, Bumstead and one of the Strangers fall through the hole and drift
out into space, and the city is shown to be a deep space habitat surrounded by a
force field.

The Strangers bring Murdoch to their home beneath the city and force Schreber to
imprint Murdoch with their collective memory, believing Murdoch to be the
culmination of their experiments. Schreber betrays them, however, and instead
inserts false memories in Murdoch that artificially reestablish his childhood as
years spent training and honing his tuning skills and learning about the Strangers
and their machines. Murdoch awakens and, now able to fully realize his powers,
frees himself and battles with the Strangers, defeating their leader Mr. Book in a
psychokinetic fight high above the city.

After learning from Schreber that Emma has been re-imprinted and cannot be
restored, Murdoch employs his powers, amplified by the Strangers' machine, to
create an actual Shell Beach by flooding the area within the force field with water
and forming a spit and beaches. On his way home, Murdoch encounters a dying Mr.
Hand and informs him that the Strangers searched in the wrong place—the mind—to
understand humanity. He rotates the habitat toward the star it had been turned away
from, and the city experiences sunlight for the first time.

Opening a door leading out of the city, Murdoch steps out to view the sunrise. On
the pier in front of him is the woman he knew as Emma, who now has new memories and
a new identity as Anna. Murdoch reintroduces himself and they walk to Shell Beach,
beginning their relationship anew.
Cast
Rufus Sewell as John Murdoch
William Hurt as Inspector Frank Bumstead
Kiefer Sutherland as Dr. Daniel P. Schreber
Jennifer Connelly as Emma Murdoch / Anna
Richard O'Brien as Mr. Hand
Ian Richardson as Mr. Book
Bruce Spence as Mr. Wall
Colin Friels as Detective Eddie Walenski
John Bluthal as Karl Harris
Mitchell Butel as Officer Husselbeck
Melissa George as May
Frank Gallacher as Chief Inspector Stromboli
Ritchie Singer as Hotel Manager / Vendor
Justin Monjo as Taxi Driver
Nicholas Bell as Mr. Rain
Satya Gumbert as Mr. Sleep (Noah Gumbert as Mr. Sleep Filming Double)
Frederick Miragliotta as Mr. Quick
Jeanette Cronin as a Stranger
David Wenham as Schreber's Assistant
Alan Cinis as Automat Cop
Bill Highfield as Automat Cop
Terry Bader as Mr. Jeremy Goodwin
Rosemary Traynor as Mrs. Sylvia Goodwin
Maureen O'Shaughnessy as Kate Walenski
Anita Kelsey provided the singing voice of Emma Murdoch.

Production
Influences
For Dark City, Proyas was influenced by film noir of the 1940s and the 1950s, such
as The Maltese Falcon (1941).[13] The film has additionally been described as
Kafkaesque, and Proyas cited the TV series The Twilight Zone as a conscious
influence.[14] Proyas also wanted the film, though nominally science fiction, to
have an element of horror to unsettle the audience.[15]

Writing
Originally, Proyas conceived a story about a 1940s detective who is obsessed with
facts and cannot solve a case where the facts do not make sense, saying: "He slowly
starts to go insane through the story. He can't put the facts together because they
don't add up to anything rational."[16] In the process of creating the fictional
world for the character of the detective, Proyas created other characters, and
ended up shifting the focus of the film from the detective (Bumstead) to the person
pursued by the detective (Murdoch). Proyas envisioned a robust narrative where the
audience could examine the film from the perspective of multiple characters and
focus on the plot.[13]

After writing the first draft of the screenplay by himself, Proyas worked with Lem
Dobbs and David S. Goyer to create the final script. Goyer had written The Crow:
City of Angels (1996), the sequel to Proyas's 1994 film The Crow, and Proyas
invited Goyer to co-write Dark City after reading Goyer's screenplay for Blade,
which had yet to be released. The Writers Guild of America initially protested the
crediting of more than two screenwriters for a film, but eventually relented and
credited all three writers.[17]

Design
When Proyas finished his preceding film, The Crow, in 1994, he approached
production designer Patrick Tatopoulos to draw concepts for the world in which Dark
City takes place.[18] The city was entirely constructed on a set, and no practical
locations were used in the film.[16] Describing the city, Tatopoulos said:
The movie takes place everywhere, and it takes place nowhere. It's a city built of
pieces of cities. A corner from one place, another from some place else. So, you
don't really know where you are. A piece will look like a street in London, but a
portion of the architecture looks like New York, but the bottom of the architecture
looks again like a European city. You're there, but you don't know where you are.
It's like every time you travel, you'll be lost.[19]

The production design included themes of darkness, spirals, and clocks. There
appears to be no sun in the city's world, and spiral designs that shrink when
approached were used. The Strangers' large clock does not have any numbers, and
Tatopoulos said: "But in a magical moment it becomes something more than just a
clock."[19] The production designer created the city architecture to have an
organic presence alongside the structural elements.[20]

The Strangers' lair is a large underground amphitheater, in which a sculpture of a

human face hides a large clock and a spiraling device changes the layout of the
city above. The set for the lair was fifty feet (15 m) in height, while an average
set is thirty-six feet (11 m), and was built on a fairground in Sydney, Australia.
The film's budget was $30–40 million,[21] so the crew used inexpensive techniques
to build the set, such as stretching canvas onto welded metal frames. The lair also
had a rail conveyance that appeared expensive. Tatopoulos said: "We had, obviously,
a car built, but we had just one built. We laid some rail for it to ride on. We
made a section of corridor that we kept driving through all the time, and you end
up believing this thing is running along forever." Proyas wanted the rail car to
pass various rooms, which was not feasible given the budget, so Tatopoulos and the
crew used "replaceable elements and strong design textures" to give the impression
it was passing different rooms.[22]

The Strangers themselves are energy beings who reside in dead human bodies. At the
beginning of the design process, the filmmakers considered having the Strangers be
bugs, but they decided the bug appearance was overused. Tatopoulos said one day
Proyas "called me and said he wanted something like an energy that kept re-powering
itself, re-creating itself, re-shaping itself, sitting inside a dry piece of human
shape."[23]

Casting
About the character of Mr Hand, Proyas said: "I had Richard in mind physically when
I wrote the character, because I had these strange, bald-looking men with an
ethereal, androgynous quality", and O'Brien had famously played a similar character
(Riff Raff) in The Rocky Horror Show. When Proyas visited London to cast the film,
he met with O'Brien and found him suitable for the role.[15]

Daniel P. Schreber, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland, was named after
Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge with narcissistic, paranoid psychosis, and
possibly schizophrenia, whose autobiographical Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
(Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken) (1903) inspired some elements of the film's
plot.[24][25][26] Hurt was originally asked to play Dr Schreber.[15] Proyas said
that Ben Kingsley was one of the original choices to portray Dr Schreber.[27]

Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was released on 24 February 1998 by TVT Records.[28] It
features music from the original score by Trevor Jones, and versions of the songs
"Sway" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" performed by singer Anita Kelsey. It
also includes music by Hughes Hall from the trailer[29] a song by Echo & the
Bunnymen that played over the final credits, as well as songs by Gary Numan and
Course of Empire that did not appear in the film. The music for the film was edited
by Simon Leadley and Jim Harrison.[30]
Release
New Line Cinema wanted the filmmakers to consider retitling the film Dark World or
Dark Empire to help differentiate it from the recently released Mad City, but Dark
City was kept as the title.[13] The film was originally scheduled to be released in
theaters on 17 October 1997,[17] then 9 January 1998,[13] and finally 27 February
1998, when it debuted in 1,754 theaters in the United States.[3]

Home media
The film was released on VHS on 2 March 1999.[31] A Region 1 widescreen DVD of the
film was released in the United States on 29 July 1998. Special features on the DVD
included two audio commentary tracks (one with film critic Roger Ebert, and one
with director Alex Proyas, writers Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer, and production
designer Patrick Tatopoulos), cast and crew biographies and filmographies,
comparisons to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, set design drawings, and the theatrical
trailer.[32]

A director's cut of Dark City was officially released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on 29
July 2008. The director's cut removes the opening narration, which Proyas felt
explained too much of the plot, and includes approximately eleven minutes of
additional footage, most of which extends scenes already present in the theatrical
release with additional establishing shots and dialogue.[33] The DVD and Blu-Ray
featured expanded audio commentaries by Ebert, Proyas, and Dobbs and Goyer, along
with several new documentaries. The Blu-ray Disc also included the original
theatrical cut of the film and the special features from the 1998 DVD release.

Reception
Critical response
Among mainstream critics in the U.S., the film received generally positive reviews.
[34] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 75% approval rating
based 85 reviews, with an average score of 6.8/10; the site's "critics consensus"
reads: "Stylishly gloomy, Dark City offers a polarizing whirl of arresting visuals
and noirish action".[35] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66
out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics.[34]

No movie can ever have too much atmosphere, and Dark City exudes it from every
frame of celluloid. Proyas' world isn't just a playground for his characters to
romp in—it's an ominous place where viewers can get lost. We don't just coolly
observe the bizarre, ever-changing skyline; we plunge into the city's benighted
depths, following the protagonist as he explores the secrets of this grim place
where the sun never shines. Dark City has as stunning a visual texture as that of
any movie that I've seen.

—James Berardinelli, writing for ReelViews[36]

Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert called the film a "great visionary
achievement", while also exclaiming that it was "a film so original and exciting,
it stirred my imagination like Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey."[37] In the
San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack wrote that the film was "among the most
memorable cinematic ventures in recent years", and "maybe there's nothing wrong
with a movie that is simply sensational to look at." He felt the film's "twisting
of reality and its daring look—layered and off-kilter grays, greens and blacks—make
it click."[38] In a mixed review, Walter Addiego of The San Francisco Examiner
thought that "as a story, Dark City doesn't amount to much", its "complicated plot"
containing important themes that were "no more than window dressing", but that
"what counts here is the show, the creation of a strange world by a filmmaker who
clearly knows science fiction and fantasy, past and present, and wants to share his
love for it."[39]

Unimpressed by the film, Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle wrote: "You really
have to feel for Alex Proyas. This guy wears bad luck like the grimy trenchcoats of
his protagonists, only his zipper's stuck and he can't seem to shake the damn thing
off." He felt "Dark City looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks
gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely
to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream."[40] Left equally
disappointed was John Anderson of the Los Angeles Times, who said of the directing
that "If you had to guess, you might say that Proyas came out of the world of comic
art himself, rather than music videos and advertising. Dark City is constructed
like panels in a Batman book, each picture striving for maximum dread", and that
Proyas was "trying simultaneously to create a pure thriller and sci-fi nightmare
along with his tongue-in-cheek critique of artifice. And this doesn't work out
quite so well."[41] Author TCh of Time Out felt that the development of the Murdoch
character was "surprisingly engrossing" and thought the "art direction is always
striking, and unlike most contemporary sci-fi, the movie does risk a cerebral
approach, tapping a vein of postmodern paranoia."[42]

Richard Corliss of Time said the film was "as cool and distant as the planet the
Strangers come from. But, Lord, is Dark City a wonder to see."[43] James
Berardinelli writing for ReelViews, remarked that "Visually, this film isn't just
impressive, it's a tour de force." and noted that "Dark City opens by immersing the
audience in the midst of a fractured, nightmarish narrative."[36] Berardinelli also
said "Dark City appears to be New York during the first half of this century, but,
using a style that is part science fiction, part noir thriller, and part gothic
horror, [Proyas] has embellished it to create a surreal place unlike no other."[36]
Describing some pitfalls, Jeff Vice of the Deseret News said that "when critics
talk about films being 'style over substance', they're definitely talking about
movies like Dark City, which looks good but leaves an unpleasant aftertaste."[44]
He was quick to admit that "The special effects and set designs are dazzling", but
ultimately felt "Proyas makes a crucial error in treating the subject even more
seriously than The Crow, and the dialogue (co-written by Proyas and The Crow: City
of Angels scriptwriter David S. Goyer) is unintentionally funny at times and often
just plain dumb."[44]

What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative
fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the
result isn't all that much fun.

—Todd McCarthy, writing in Variety[45]

Andrea Basora of Newsweek, stated that director Proyas flooded the screen with
"cinematic and literary references ranging from Murnau and Lang to Kafka and
Orwell, creating a unique yet utterly convincing world".[46] Similarly, David
Sterritt wrote in The Christian Science Monitor that "The story is dark and often
violent, but it's told with a remarkable sense of visual energy and
imagination."[47] Marshall Fine of USA Today found the film to be "Fascinating,
visionary filmmaking", and said that "With its amber-tinged palette and its
distinctively dystopian view of life, it may be the most unique-looking film we've
seen in ages", but said that it "defies logic and makes frightening and unexpected
leaps."[48] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the "plot that Dark
City builds on John's predicament is a confused affair" and that the film's premise
is "unsettling enough to make you wonder if it could actually derail a seriously
drug-addled mind."[49]

Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique found the production design and the

cinematography overwhelming, but he considered the narrative engagement of Sewell's
amnesiac character to be ultimately successful, writing: "As the story progresses,
the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, and we gradually realize that the film is
not a murky muddle of visuals propping up a weak story. All the questions lead to
answers, and the answers make sense within the fantasy framework." He compared Dark
City to Proyas's preceding film, The Crow, in style, but found Dark City to
introduce new themes and to be a "more thoroughly consistent" film.[50] Biodrowski
concluded that "Dark City may not provide profound answers, but it deals seriously
with a profound idea, and does it in a way that is cathartic and even uplifting,
without being contrived or condescending. As a technical achievement, it is superb,
and that technique is put in the service of telling a story that would be difficult
to realize any other way."[51]

Box office
Its opening weekend in theaters, Dark City grossed $5,576,953, enough to place
fourth at the box office;[3] Titanic, which had been released ten weeks earlier,
grossed $19,633,056 and was still number one.[52] The following weekend, it earned
$2,837,941 (a decrease of 49.1%) and dropped to ninth place, while Titanic remained
in first with grosses totaling $17,605,849.[53]

During its four-week theatrical run, the film earned $14,378,331 domestically.
Internationally, it took in an additional $12,821,985, for a combined worldwide box
office total of $27,200,316.[3] The film's cumulative gross was the 105th-highest
of 1998.[54]

Accolades
The film won and was nominated for several awards in 1998. Film critic Roger Ebert
cited it as the best film of 1998,[55][56] and in 2005 he included it on his "Great
Movies" list.[57] Ebert used it in his teaching, and also recorded an audio
commentary for the original DVD and the 2006 Director's Cut.[57] The film was
screened out of competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.[58]

Award Category Name Outcome

Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Silver Scream Award Alex Proyas Won
Bram Stoker Award Best Screenplay Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and David S. Goyer
Won (tied with Gods and Monsters)
Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film Pegasus Audience Award Alex Proyas
Won
Film Critics Circle of Australia Best Screenplay – Original Alex Proyas, Lem
Dobbs, and David S. Goyer Won (tied with The Interview)
Hugo Award Best Dramatic Presentation Nominated
International Horror Guild Award Best Movie Nominated
National Board of Review Special Recognition Won
Saturn Award Best Science Fiction Film Won (tied with Armageddon)
Best Costume Liz Keogh Nominated
Best Director Alex Proyas Nominated
Best Make-Up Bob McCarron, Lesley Vanderwalt, and Lynn Wheeler Nominated
Best Special Effects Andrew Mason, Mara Bryan, Peter Doyle, and Tom Davies
Nominated
Best Writer Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and David S. Goyer Nominated
Analysis
One of the things that we're exploring in this film, is what it is that makes us
who we are. And, when you strip an individual of his identity, is there some spark,
some essence there that keeps them being human, gives them some sort of identity?

Alex Proyas[59]
Theologian Gerard Loughlin interpreted Dark City as a retelling of Plato's Allegory
of the Cave. For Loughlin, the city dwellers are prisoners who do not realize they
are in a prison. John Murdoch's escape from the prison parallels the escape from
the cave in the allegory. He is assisted by Dr. Schreber, who explains the city's
mechanism as Socrates explains to Glaucon how the shadows in the cave are cast.
Murdoch, however, becomes more than Glaucon: "He is a Glaucon who comes to realize
that Socrates' tale of an upper, more real world, is itself a shadow, a
forgery."[60] Murdoch defeats the Strangers, who control the inhabitants, and
remakes the world based on childhood memories, which were themselves illusions
arranged by the Strangers. He casts new shadows for the city inhabitants, who must
trust his judgment. Unlike Plato, Murdoch "is disabused of any hope of an outside"
and becomes the demiurge for the cave, the only environment he knows. Of the lack
of background provided in the film, Loughlin said: "The origin of the city is off-
stage, unknown and unknowable."[60]

The city in Dark City was described by Sarah L. Higley as a "murky, nightmarish
German expressionist film noir depiction of urban repression and mechanism". It has
a World War II-era dreariness reminiscent of Edward Hopper's works, as well as
details from different eras and architectures that are changed by the Strangers:
"buildings collapse as others emerge and battle with one another at the end". The
round window of Murdoch's hotel room is concave like a fishbowl, and is a
frequently seen element throughout the city. The inhabitants do not live at the top
of the city; the main characters' homes are dwarfed by the bricolage of buildings.
[61]

The film contains motifs from Greek mythology, in which gods manipulate humans to
serve a higher agenda. Proyas said: "I do like Greek mythology and have read a
little of it, so maybe some of it has crept into the work, though I don't
completely agree with that point of view."[62]

Similarities to other works

The film's style is often compared to that of the works of Terry Gilliam
(especially Brazil).[63][64][65][66][67][68] Some stylistic similarities have also
been noted to Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's 1995 film The City of Lost
Children,[69][70] another film that was particularly inspired by Gilliam (Gilliam
had presented Jeunet's and Caro's previous film Delicatessen (1991), which was a
deliberate homage to Gilliam's style, in North America[71][72]).

The Matrix, which was released one year after Dark City, was also filmed at Fox
Studios in Sydney, and it even used some of Dark City's sets.[57] Comparisons of
the two films have made note of similarities in cinematography, atmosphere, and
plot.[73]

Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis was a major influence on the architecture,
concepts about the baseness of humans within a metropolis, and the general tone of
Dark City.[74] In one of the documentary shorts included on the director's cut home
video releases of the film, the influence of the early German films M and Nosferatu
are also mentioned.

One of the last scenes of the movie, in which buildings "restore" themselves, is
similar to the last panel of the Akira manga, and Proyas has called the film's
final battle an "homage to Otomo's Akira".[75] Dark City has also drawn comparisons
to the anime films Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)[76][77] and Megazone
23 (1985),[78] as well as the 1993 video game Gadget Invention, Travel, &
Adventure.[79]

When Christopher Nolan first started thinking about writing the script for
Inception, he was influenced by "that era of movies where you had The Matrix, you
had Dark City, you had The Thirteenth Floor and, to a certain extent, you had
Memento, too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not
be real".[80]

Tie-ins
Mask of the Evil Apparition, a short film written and directed by Proyas and set in
the Dark City cinematic universe, was released in 2021. During a Q&A session after
a screening of the short film, Proyas revealed he was in the early stages of
developing a Dark City series.[81]

See also
 Film portal
A Feasibility Study (The Outer Limits)
List of films featuring space stations
The Signal (2014 film)
References
"Dark City". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
"Dark City (1998) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
"Dark City (1998)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
Helms, Michael (May 1998). "Dark City: Interview with Andrew Mason and Alex
Proyas". Cinema Papers. North Melbourne: Cinema Papers Pty Ltd. (124): 18–21. ISSN
0311-3639.
Ebert, Roger (31 March 1999). "The Matrix". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 18 September
2015.
"Dark City vs The Matrix". RetroJunk. 17 August 2015. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
Tyridal, Simon (28 January 2005). "Matrix City: A Photographic Comparison of The
Matrix and Dark City". ElectroLund. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
"Dark City director Alex Proyas reportedly tuning up for new series based on the
1998 sci-fi cult classic". SYFY Official Site. 12 August 2021. Retrieved 20 March
2022.
"Dark City, the sci-fi cult classic, is being made into a TV series". Shortlist.
13 August 2021. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
"The Best Movie You Never Saw: Dark City". JoBlo. 15 April 2020. Retrieved 20
March 2022.
"Dark City Series Is in Development with Director Alex Proyas". MovieWeb. 13
August 2021. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
Proyas, Alex (Director) (2008). Dark City, Director's Cut: at approximately 1:08,
Mr Hand states that the city is a mix of eras. (Blu-Ray disc)
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is there something left, something that they acknowledge or recognize within each
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External links
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