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The fact that it includes television rights gives me some hope that we'll see a decent take on the novel someday.

Good luck to them.

http://www.legendary.com/legendary-entertainment-acquires-rights-to-frank-herberts-classic-sci-fi-novel-dune/

It's nice to see some movement on the license - but without an actual project, I doubt we will see any games.

I bet the next Dune adaptation is almost as successful as the next Starship Troopers adaption. Sadly, they'll both lose box office share to that movie based off of a napkin Philip K. Dick once sneezed into.


What's it take to get a Mote in God's Eye movie made, anyway?

The significant part of that news is the TV rights - they surely immediately turned around after closing this deal and called HBO, Amazon, and Netflix, and surely one of them will pick it up as it's the perfect IP for a big, sprawling, convoluted, high production value drama in the mold of Game of Thrones which seems to be the done thing at the moment.

I think Dune would make a fantastic TV series, and less effective as a movie.

 Yodhrin wrote:
The significant part of that news is the TV rights - they surely immediately turned around after closing this deal and called HBO, Amazon, and Netflix, and surely one of them will pick it up as it's the perfect IP for a big, sprawling, convoluted, high production value drama in the mold of Game of Thrones which seems to be the done thing at the moment.

As long as its one of those or similar. Id probably hate trying to watch it if its Fox or NBC and so on. Ive just grown to hate regular tv channel shows anymore, the jokes are bad which is bad because there are jokes everywhere and action scenes just make me scratch my head. The Flash is a perfect example. My wife and kids watch that and love it but I have to leave the room, shows like that just drive me nuts.

We will always have the Lynch version to keep us warm at night!

Say what you will about it, and a lot of negative things could be said, but the production design on that picture is like a gold standard to me. I hope that whoever is in charge of designing a future production looks back to that movie for a base line of inspiration/brand identity.

Agreed, the 80's movie had its issues, but man, talk about nailing the atmosphere, that movie is amazingly memorable.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Agreed, the 80's movie had its issues, but man, talk about nailing the atmosphere, that movie is amazingly memorable.

Glad I'm not the only one that liked the 1984 film.

I honestly don't know how anyone couldn't like it

So much raw 80's-ness compressed into a single film...

 Vaktathi wrote:
I honestly don't know how anyone couldn't like it

So much raw 80's-ness compressed into a single film...

Of course, you can't get anymore 1980's than Sting starring in your film.

Sting as Feyd Rautha ... awesome saucem. I have read and re-read every Dune book, including the prequels and what not that Frank's kid, Brian and his writing mate Kevin Anderson have written. The problem with making movies is that there is so much story to tell and so little time to tell it all. I would have ZERO problem watching an 8 hour Dune movie if it was done correctly. Plots, sub plots, betrayals, .... there are so many deep but important little details that have to be told.

The recent sci-fi channel ones were not bad, but you run into money problems when it comes to TV, but you gain the opportunity to developed the intricate details that does the books justice. All in all, I would love to see more Dune stuff on TV or movies... if they can be done decent.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I honestly don't know how anyone couldn't like it

So much raw 80's-ness compressed into a single film...

Of course, you can't get anymore 1980's than Sting starring in your film.

Sure you can. Sting starring in your cast montage played over the end credits accompanied by a Toto score.

...with Kyle Maclachlan, Sean Young, Brad Dourif, Jurgen Prochnow, Dean Stockwell and Virginia Madsen.

Funny you bring up the end credits - I am totally crazy about them. The whole movie could be justified by that sequence alone. Whenever I am listening to the OST in the car, I listen to that track about 100 times and recount all the cast. Casting like that really needs to be the cornerstone of any future Dune project (another example would be The Name of the Rose). That credits track is just begging for lyrics, too, wonder if Toto ever composed any?




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Wow just watching that YT vid you posted Bob, I am so in love with that credit sequence.

Also Sean &oung in this and Bladerunner, my God what a beauty ... but my dream 80s date would still be going to see Wrath of Khan with Susanna Hoffs (who remains super hot).

The end credits hit me like that, too. The first time I saw Dune (well, the second, but I was too young the first time) the credits made me instantly nostalgic for the film and I had to watch it again. I used to listen to the soundtrack while doing homework, and would always look forward to Desert Theme, Big Battle, and then Take My Hand as the bittersweet payoff. ( I always skipped Floating Fat Man.). I, too, thought of the cast in front of the rolling waves. Any new Dune movie should have some kind of homage to those iconic credits.


Oh, and Courtney Thorne-Smith circa Summer School to see Ghostbusters.

Bittersweet is exactly the right word - that music just makes you feel like you have watched the best and most important sci fi epic instead of ... well a film with tons of great pieces but also lots of problems. It's a kind of false nostalgia but extremely powerful and there are so many perfect elements in the production to allow your imagination to create the artificial memory of this amazing movie that never really got made. The actual movie is just like the echo of that ideal film, and there are so many beats in the soundtrack (the ominous refelctive theme introduced at the outset in Guild Report, the surging confidence of Riding the Sandworm, the messianic climax in Final Dream) that almost seem like evidence of that ideal film's existence in some alternate universe.

And how can this be?

FOR HE IS THE KWISATZ HADERACH!

The Lynch film had some great production design and I agree the end credits are memorable. However, the film got SO much wrong. Major, important themes from the book are entirely missing. The ending is an epic fail on multiple levels -- not just because it makes Paul a god instead of a very flawed human being, but because it makes the Fremen's centuries-long ecological efforts pointless. Paul made it rain and that was that.

And many of the things that people remember most about the film are Lynch's weird and/or gross little details -- weirding modules, heart plugs, boils, kitties, etc. -- that had nothing to do with the novel and distracted from the story more than they enhanced it.

The Alan Smithee extended version was improved in certain respects, but didn't fix the fundamental flaws. The cast -- while excellent overall -- also included some shaky performances. McMillan was like a cartoon of a cartoon. And Sean Young was a fox, but she wasn't a very good Chani, IMO. That role calls for someone who can project an earthier, wild edge. Of course, that may also have just been the script, which was obviously very flawed.

Personally, I file that film under "beautiful disaster". I hope we can get a good TV miniseries someday. The SciFi version wasn't terrible in terms of its treatment of the subject matter...it just had its limitations.

I saw the Lynch film before I read the book, so I was expecting the book to be much more unconventional and memorable. I was surprised by how "vanilla" sci fi the book was, considering its reputation. Yeah, it was great, but the experience of reading the book and the images in my mind never lived up to the sheer otherworldliness that the Lynch film prepared me for. The story, themes and world building were good, but that's true for hundreds of sci fi novels.

Ian McNiece is best Baron!

Love that 1984 movie, but i hope they do a whole new design,

I really couldn't get through the first 4 hours of the film. The other 95 hours seemed like a chore.

The movie had lots of cool themes running through it, but that was it. It was hard to recognize and keep track of who some of the characters were. Story-wise it was a huge mess. It deviated so far from the books that they were even making feth up as they went along. Heart plugs? Weirding modules? What the feth is that? Sean Young was pretty but a Freman? And let's not forget that this movie bombed hard at the box office.

Then there is the mini-series. It may not have had the special effects budget to do Dune justice but at least it was true to the novels. The casting choices were a lot better and the characters recognizable as the show went on. The only people who seemed to really hate it were the Lynch fan-boys. It was received well enough that Sci-fi (now Syfy) green-lit the sequel which was also true to the novels and surprisingly watchable considering so much of the books took place in characters' thoughts.

Now if you could somehow marry the narrative of the mini-series to (most) Lynch's visual themes then that might be cool. Otherwise there's just no reason to do Dune again.