Philip K. Dick wrote the short story that inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report.
Dick’s story, “The Minority Report,” was first published in 1956. It introduced the idea of a future police system that arrests people before they commit crimes, while also exploring free will, prediction, and the possibility of conflicting forecasts.
Spielberg’s film expands that premise into a 2054 thriller set in Washington, D.C. Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, a chief of the PreCrime division who becomes implicated in a future murder prediction. The film adds characters, technology, political conflict, and an extended chase narrative that are not presented in the same form in Dick’s short story.
Minority Report is one of several major films adapted from Dick’s fiction, alongside Blade Runner, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly. The movie’s futuristic interfaces and personalized advertising were especially noted for imagining technologies that later became familiar in modified forms.