Peter Berg confirms he will be directing the project.
Guess this means I can put my screenplay on hold. At least until I find out if they fuck this one up too.
I coulda sworn there were Dune fans on the forum.
Well, at least it can’t be worse than the last one.
Right? Right?
And now you’ve jinxed the project… I’m sure they’ll have Mick Jagger playing… someone… to offset Sting’s brilliant performance…
(D&R)
The last movie was a Lynch-fueled disaster. But the miniseries wasn’t so bad. And the sequel miniseries was pretty good, too. Not perfect, but more or less convinced me that the miniseries treatment was the way to go for Dune.
Now, back to a movie format? I cheerfully sat through Return of the King, but this new Dune will have to be damn good to get me to sit through something likely to be even longer.
I suspect that we’ll see Dune Hollywoodized – lots more action shoehorned in on the flimsiest of excuses, lots less Lynchian talkover narration.
I think the Lynch Dune is pretty friggin awesome, but I saw it before I’d read the book which tends to save a movie.
Same here. And I didn’t like the one on cable at all.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now. The only way to do Dune and do it right, will be to do it in an anime format.
There were good and bad points of both versions so far.
Also, I don’t see the ‘Hollywoodization’ of Dune. Dune can at least be adapted to the Hollywood idea of Sci-Fi, but DM and CoD couldn’t stand as feature films, IMO. The last 2 books would be better suited to film, but can Joe Average film goer ‘get’ that the last sequels has not one of the characters from the first 4? I know that Duncan is in the last 2 books, but he is just a ghola child with the reawakened memories.
As an aside question: what do you think the focus of any Dune adaptation should be? The personal saga of Paul Atreides and his family? The ecosystem of an alien world? The Byzantine intrigue of galactic politics? The overturning of that system by what amounts to a theocracy? The ultimate fate of humanity as a whole? To what extent are those themes interconnected in the whole series? (Which I’ve never finished.)
Oh, Heavens… the industry’s just going to keep trying at Dune until they find their Peter Jackson equivalent, aren’t they?
And Lumpy, that’s part of the problem… you’d basically have to produce 4 simultaneous movies intertwined within the same greater story (so now we also need a Tarantino… Oy…)
The only way to do it right would be as an HBO 13 episode miniseries of at least 5 seasons (I wouldn’t mind if they squished Heretics and Chapterhouse into one because those two were something of a hot mess anyway). JMO.
For completion’s sake, we need two more adaptations:
A Pornographic Version
A “Baby” Version, where all the characters are baby versions, a la "Muppet Babies**
If you really want to make things awful, let’s have a A Musical Version
For those who haven’t seen this, here is the ultimate Dune movie that never was.
Pink Floyd soundtrack, with art direction by Salvador Dali, effects by Dan O’Bannon…my imagination reels with the possibilities 
Yep - it has the scope, the central story thread and the established fanbase. But, as we saw with the various attempts at LoTR and a view of what ultimately succeeded - there needs to be a clear vision for the film that respects all of those factors. Lynch missed on enough stuff that his work doesn’t stand up as definitive. Same with the mini-series.
Hey baby, check out my sandworm, yeah. [/AustinPowers]
Also, Billy & Mandy* already did an infantalized “Dune.” It was pretty good, actually.
*whatever that cartoon is called nowadays… Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, maybe?
Usul has called a big one. Again, it is the legend.
Duh duh, duh-duh!
I liked the Sardaukar in the the Lynch version though, when I’m god emperor of the universe my elite troops will waddle around in black envirosuits with their faces peeking out through little windows with creepy green backlighting.
When the Lynch Dune was good, it was very, very good. And I’d read the book–many years before.
I’m up for another Dune. I saw the film the weekend it opened and was terrible disappointed. Visually, it was great, but the crap with the Harkonnens and the wierding modules was pathetic. I got the miniseries on DVD, since I don’t have cable or satellite, and found it more satisfying than the movie had been. I didn’t care for Wm Hurt’s performance (speak up! enunciate!), but the Baron Harkonnen was excellent. I’ll keep watching any new versions till they make the perfect one or I die (alas, the more likely of the two).
I think Lynch’s Dune was pretty good, but it ran into limitations – they didn’t want the damned thing running too long, and they carved it up. Pepper mill saw it before she read the book, and said it looked like a story with the middle chapters cut out, which it was. But it was visyally stunning. And they used John Schoenherr’s Sandworms!
There were some problems – “Weirding modules”!!! And why did the Baron Harkonnen have to have terminal acne and act like a loon? (I’ll take the miniseries version of the Baron over Lynch’s on those points), but if he’d had the budget and time to properly complete it, I think Lynch’s would’ve been the best. But I don’t think that it could’ve been done in 1984 that way. Peter Jackson could not have gotten away with a three-part Lord of the Rings epic much before 2000, I suspect.
The Miniseries of Dune was pretty faithful, with pretty good CGI effects, but somehow not terribly memorable (aside from the silly hats). I don’t know why this is – I just rewatched it. But it’s miss8ing something. Lynch’s bold vision, at least, stuck in your head.
I would’ve HATED Jodoroweski’s version. H.R. Giger’s sandworms look like fledgling Aliens, and his other sketches don’t look right at all. Jodorowski’s script reputedly had Jessica and Paul in an incestuous relationship, too. Why, fer cryin’ out loud?
Dali was a late addition to the team, tapped, primarily to play the Emperor, and would have provided mercifully little. I love his art, but the stuff he was insisting on as a condition of his involvement was ludicrous and repulsive.
The fact that the rest was to be visualized by Moebius and HR Giger, however, would have been amazing.
With Jodoworski, Moebius, and Giger still alive, I have a crazy, impossible dream that this movie will still get made.
(I doubt it would have been any better received than Lynch’s, as the description is clearly even more of a Jodoworski/Girauld movie, over a skeletal framework of Dune, than Lynch’s was a David Lynch film over a skeletal framework of Dune.)