The fact that a movie version of Dune is so difficult to mount is absolutely nothing new. Before the 1984 David Lynch version (one I truly love, but has serious issues) it had a well-documented run of failure.
A bit of history: from 1971 until the ’84 release the movie had changed hands so much it would have broken the internet had it existed back then. Alejandro Jodorowsky was working on what almost certainly would have been an incredible film, utilizing the talents of Salvador Dali, H.R. Giger, David Carradine and Pink Floyd (to name a few). While Alien would be born from some of the concepts and script work, the thematic Dune would still have a lot of trouble getting produced.
Dino de Laurentiis obtained the rights and quickly went through many drafts, pissing off plenty of people along the way. Then came 1981, and with the rights set to expire de Laurentiis quickly forced the production into turnaround and the result was David Lynch’s Dune: a critical and financial flop.
So this brings us to the present day, and now comes a report that Paramount is being pressured by the rights holders into making a decision regarding its own interpretation of the 1965 literary classic, with a Spring 2011 deadline. They’ve already spent 4 years developing this behemoth, with Peter Berg at one time attached, so the danger here is that they’ll have to simply drop the project altogether and lose millions in development.
Some things never change, especially when it comes to Dune adaptations.
10 comments
Personally, I love the lynch version (not a huge fan of some of the extra gross add-ons like the heart plugs etc.) but overall it remains a really good film. I think one of the problems with Dune is there is no natural trilogy of films (it's no LOTR) – so if a studio invests a shitload of time, energy and money, it's still high risk. The books following the original Dune just aren't that great, and they aren't really packed full of moments that would make them interesting sequels – the 2nd book is slow, the third book only really gets interesting when Leto begins his transformation, and then the series goes off the rails with the 4th book. Dune is great, the rest of the original series….not so much.
I love how people always just assume Jodorowsky would have made a neat film of DUNE (or "incredible") because he's all weird and shit. Truth is, if you look at what he said he wanted to do, it would have been a mess, including Dali's scant few days of work with a million(+) $ payday, and insistence that he play the emperor as sitting on a golden throne toilet sculpted to look like dolphins eating his piss and crap.
"from 1971 until the '84 release the movie had changed hands so much it would have broken the internet had it existed back then."—Back then, of course, the Internet only had like 4 sites, and on Sunday nights, families would gather around the family computer (which took up an entire room) to listen to the Milton Berle podcast.
Sad news but really, did we ever expect to see another Dune adaptation? I for one, never had high expectations for it to fully develop, although it would have been nice to see a treatment of it utilizing 2010 moviemaking technology. I like the Lynch version too, warts and all. Heck I even liked the 1999 si fi channel mini series.
@2 and in what way wouldn't that have been amazing?
IF pretending you have Asperger's is this century's version of copying cool black people, then, PlanB you are Elvis.
Gotta admit that I think the Lynch DUNE is super fun and the SciFi Dune is quite satisfying. I'm not hurt about a Peter Berg DUNE maybe not happening… there's quite a bit of drama required in this story that I'm not sure he's shown he can pull off. Other than Sarandon, who was absolute shit, the actors and directors of the SciFi Dune handled the drama really well.
To the guy that said the rest of the series isn't on par with the original… Way off! The second book is a step down but from the third book on (and especially the fourth and fifth) this series is every bit as excellent as the first book. Stopping with the original Dune and not continuing the series is criminal. The original Dune is barely the top of the iceberg of the overall story.
I guess I'm the opinion of the fourth book in the series to be among the best. I think the first two sequels were crap. Everything else was amazing.
I thought the fourth book was pretty interesting. Leto had to become Darth Vader to protect humanity
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