Lengendary Entertainment to take a crack at Dune

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Let's see...You have political intrigue, bizzare technology that is both fantastically advanced and strangely pre-industrial, cultivated meta-human abilities and hallucinatory mutants, titanic harnessable monsters, a twisted secret society of feme fatales, multi-generational eugenics, mixed martial arts, mystery cults, and all in a cinematic landscape.

Really, its just too much, a nearly impossible Wagnerian feat, for one director to capture in even a series of several full-length films. By comparison 'Lord of the Rings' was child's play.

"pre-industrial"?

[Rev. Rye]

I'd like them to move past the first book.

Of course, that would hinge on the first film doing well...

The original's huge, over 500 pages. That one alone is hard enough to cram into one film.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Let's see...You have political intrigue, bizzare technology that is both fantastically advanced and strangely pre-industrial, cultivated meta-human abilities and hallucinatory mutants, titanic harnessable monsters, a twisted secret society of feme fatales, multi-generational eugenics, mixed martial arts, mystery cults, and all in a cinematic landscape.

Really, its just too much, a nearly impossible Wagnerian feat, for one director to capture in even a series of several full-length films. By comparison 'Lord of the Rings' was child's play.

"pre-industrial"?

I was thinking specifically of ornithoppers. They sound like some strange Leonardo DaVinci flying contraption. Plus they fight with swords and the teeth of sandworms.

[Alex K]

"pre-industrial"?

I was thinking specifically of ornithoppers. They sound like some strange Leonardo DaVinci flying contraption. Plus they fight with swords and the teeth of sandworms.

The Butlerian jihad and the subsequent banning of thinking machines render the whole world oddly anachronistic. That's why I called it steampunk-like although that doesn't quite capture it ...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'd like them to move past the first book.

Of course, that would hinge on the first film doing well...

The original's huge, over 500 pages. That one alone is hard enough to cram into one film.

They could turn it over to Peter Jackson.  Given what he did to 'The Hobbit', I've no doubt that that self-important cash whore could turn 'Dune' into an 8 hour bloat fest.  Hand him all seven sequels, and your great-grandchildren can still be watching 'Chapterhouse: Dune' as they listen to their arteries hardening.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"pre-industrial"?

I was thinking specifically of ornithoppers. They sound like some strange Leonardo DaVinci flying contraption. Plus they fight with swords and the teeth of sandworms.

Not at all "pre-industrial" with regard to heavier-than-aircraft. As for the swords, that's sport. And the sandworm teeth were used by a bunch of Bedouins, IIRC. The foppish character of some of the principals would count as Elizabethan, I guess.

[Jackalope]

Meh, the Lynch adaptation was thin and shallow. There's just only so much you can do in a 2 hour film with 500 pages of complex source material.

I don't expect much from any attempt, the reproduction will be faithless to the original, and like Lynch's, disjointed and hard to follow - if you don't already know the story.

I expect to be disappointed.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I was thinking specifically of ornithoppers. They sound like some strange Leonardo DaVinci flying contraption. Plus they fight with swords and the teeth of sandworms.

The Butlerian jihad and the subsequent banning of thinking machines render the whole world oddly anachronistic. That's why I called it steampunk-like although that doesn't quite capture it ...

IMHO the prequels really butchered that one - although shifting the moral roles of the Atreides and the Harkonnens was an interesting twist.

---

I expect to be disappointed.

The only saving grace was having Sting.

[Crossless2.0]

Of course, that would hinge on the first film doing well...

The original's huge, over 500 pages. That one alone is hard enough to cram into one film.

They could turn it over to Peter Jackson.  Given what he did to 'The Hobbit', I've no doubt that that self-important cash whore could turn 'Dune' into an 8 hour bloat fest.  Hand him all seven sequels, and your great-grandchildren can still be watching 'Chapterhouse: Dune' as they listen to their arteries hardening.

Boru

Oh, God . . . no! Anything but that!

Heading into what I thought was the home stretch of Return of the King, I was already restless. An hour later, and drained of hope, I started drafting a will, just in case I never made it out of the theater. There was no way in hell I was going to subject myself to his Hobbit "opus".

[TheRealJoeFish]

I think the way forward with adaptations of things like this has been made clear to us:

No single movie.
No two-movie set.
No miniseries.

Something like Dune - or Foundation, or even His Dark Materials - calls out for a multi-season series. Television production and margins are at an all-time high. We have the technology. We have the demand and the feasibility and the profit. We need 13 hour-long episodes for Dune - and maybe 13 for the first half and 13 for the second half. And continue for Messiah and Children.