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EXCLUSIVE: Paramount has turned loose the giant worm, and everything else that was part of the seminal Frank Herbert science fiction novel series Dune. The studio’s four-year attempt to make a movie out of the franchise has fallen by the wayside. Paramount and the rights holders came to a parting of the ways as the rights lapsed. “Paramount’s option has expired and we couldn’t reach an agreement,” said Richard P. Rubinstein, who controls the rights to what is considered the biggest-selling science fiction book ever. “I’m going to look at my options, and whether I wind up taking the script we developed in turnaround, or start over, I’m not sure yet.”
Dune tells the story of an interplanetary battle for control of the desert planet Arrakis and its supply of Melange, a spice that can be ingested. Those who take it live longer and have a prescient sense of awareness. The substance is necessary for space travel. The book was turned into a 1984 flop by David Lynch, but a miniseries that came later fared better.
Rubinstein said that Paramount’s exit came down to dollars, but the producer said he and the rights holders were OK with it. “Sure, it’s frustrating, how long this has taken, but most of what I’ve done that worked out well over the years, like the miniseries The Stand, took a long time,” Rubinstein said. “Since I know what I want, eventually, I’ll find someone who’ll agree with me. What I like is that talent has interesting things to say on how they would approach it.” Rubinstein had been producing with Kevin Misher, but everything’s up in the air at the moment. “Right now, Dune has no commitments or attachments,” he said. Rubinstein and his company New Amsterdam made the Dune miniseries, and he is the gatekeeper for the rights on behalf of the author’s estate and ABC. Even though Pete Berg dropped out to do Battleship, Dune for a time looked like it had a fighting chance. Rubinstein and Misher quite liked the job that Taken helmer Pierre Morel did in collaborating with Chase Palmer. They managed to get a script that cut the mammoth subject matter down to a compelling story that could be told at feature length. Rubinstein said that he would probably re-approach Morel and Palmer, but those conversations haven’t yet happened. All they now need is a financier ready to put up the $100 million or so in production budget needed to get the film under way. If they do use the Palmer script, Paramount stands to recoup some of its development costs.
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I was really satisfied with the two Dune TV mini-series, I just wish they could do a third mini-series I mean they’ve only done “Dune” and “Children Of Dune”.
As to Asimov, I can’t tell you how excited I am about this project. Asimov is the greatest ever sci-fi writer imo, and the “Foundation” series is stunning.
Why make another Dune movie? If they want a novel based sci-fi franchise why not go for A. E. Van Vogts “The World Of Null-A” , “The Pawns (Players) Of Null-A” and “Null-A Three”? At least we’ll get something we haven’t seen before. I’m getting tired of all these remakes!
I don’t think Foundation is Asimov’s best work, and I’ve read a few of them, and many of his other books. It’s originally a set of short stories, from the ’50s. It basically goes “problem”, “open the vault”, “phew, glad Hari thought of that one”.
I suppose like I, Robot, they’d have to just take themes and the general feeling of the book, and cobble together a new story based on the shorter ones.
That said, “Prelude” might be ok, has a plot you can follow, not much of a whiz-bang ending tho.
What Dune needs is not a $100 million movie treatment, but a $1 million per episode TV series a la Battlestar Galactica. Take the first 3 books, since the others are basically a separate storyline, put it on SyFy, make it a serious, non-camp dark series, and the viewers will come. One Sean Bean’s character dies in Game of Thrones, hire him to be Duke Leto and he can die again in the first season. I see season one as the journey from caladan to the death of Leto/Paul’s joining the Fremen; season 2 will be the war against the Harkonnen to the coming of Muadib, and seasons 2-4 will feature the Jihad of the Fremen to the rise of the god emperor. But please, no weirding modules…
It won’t happen BUT this is how it SHOULD happen.
Just wanted to add, this would also be even better on HBO/Starz/Showtime because of what you can show/say.
If Game of Thrones works perhaps HBO can make this work as a mini-series too?
Since there was the Movie and the mini series (which I thought were quite good) I was never that excited about them making yet another version of Dune. I feel the same way about the new version of Superman. How many times must we see the same story filmed over and over again?
However I just saw the new Captain America trailer and it looks great! This is a “remake” as well, but there’s a good reason to remake it as the previous version of Captain America was so bad.
The 1984 presentation was a turd, i’ll chip in $25 to not have the directors cut released.
Speaking of Classic SF, what about Roger Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT? I recall hearing some years ago that a movie was in the works, and the sets were to have been converted into an amusement park after the film’s completion, as a way to recoup the enormous costs? (No, really – that was the plan!)
Of course, the biggest “cash cow” of Zelazny’s works would be the AMBER series; at least we know how it ends – unlike The GAME OF THRONES’ never-ending story…
I like the first film adaptation of Dune the best . . . it’s called Star Wars. Lucas cut out so much of what makes Dune impossible to make into a great movie, that it isn’t completely obvious that it is Dune. But it is.
So true. There is a website somewhere that shows the comparisons but just for starters:
Arrakis = Desert Planet
Tatooine = Desert Planet
Bene Gesserit’s “voice” = The Jedi mind trick
Princes Alia = Princes Leia
etc etc
I listened to an interview with Lynch years ago. He admitted that he wasn’t familiar with the book Dune, and that the script went through so many rewrites that he was never sure what was Herbert, and what was added by the script doctors. Unlike Peter Jackson, who was familiar with his Middle-earth subject matter, David Lynch did not have a clue about Dune when he made his movie. He read it quickly after they made him director. I was not happy about a movie version of the Lord of the Rings, but I respect what Jackson did with it. Lynch should never have been given the job. It doesn’t bother me that there are fans of his movie, but I don’t understand how you can be a fan of Herbert’s book and the Lynch cinematic abomination.
Dune is way to big to do big screen . Needs to be spread out. A new type of “not so mini series”. Start with some Butlerian Jihad and go from there. 4-6 episodes a book. The Dune universe needs to be shown. Yeah, Dune itself
was awesome, but there is soo much back story, so much after story, why keep poking the original book??
The Lynch movie was an abomination… Weirding modules… REALLY??? I’m sorry, the end was atrocious. Paul was not a god.. Just a director of the future.. To make it rain on Arrakis gives the impression that he could do miracles. Paul Never performed “miracles’, other than the transformation of the water of life…
Loved the Sci-Fi Mini-series.. Both stayed closer to the books and my vision of what Paul would be like. I would have loved to see a big budget Dune movie series.. With SFX being so advanced now.. it would be a treat for the eyes.. Also, there are better writers out there now who actually educate themselves on the subject matter more throughly to create better stories.. I agree, Justin.. Start with the Jihad.. Whet the appetites, then Make the first Dune movie.. It would make most dune fans happy indeed…
to Team Scott Smith:
“I like the first film adaptation of Dune the best . . . it’s called Star Wars. Lucas cut out so much of what makes Dune impossible to make into a great movie, that it isn’t completely obvious that it is Dune. But it is.”
Idiot.
You could compare it to Alice and Wonderland and possibly be MORE wrong, but I’m not too sure about that.
This is my personal, professional opinion from someone who has read the first novel countless times and has watched and compared both the film and mini-series too often to be considered sane.
1 ** I often hear that the mini-series was closer to the book than the film was. I disagree. What I think gives people that impression is that more scenes from the book are found in the mini-series than the film, but, the mini-series changed far more things and personalities than the film did. The two main things with the film are the weirding modules (dumb idea), and the ending sequence (really dumb idea, especially in that it pretty much kills the potential of a sequel). The mini-series, on the other hand, changes far too many major items (Irulan’s added story, dialog, Paul’s young personality, etc) to even bother listing. Plus, the costumes were horrible.
2 ** If a new movie were to be made, I find it hard to believe they could contain the first novel in less than 3 hours. In fact, I think it impossible and still do justice to the story. A better idea is to split the movie into 3 movies (divided between the sub-books of the original novel), or at minimum, 2 movies. The problem with 3 movies is that the first sub-book of the novel isn’t much of a movie. One of the first Lynch attempt drafts went this direction, and ended with Paul and Jessica abandoned to the desert. It isn’t until after this point that a wide audience would become interested in the movie (as self contained, ignoring the latter 2 parts). A 2 part movie, combining the first two sub-books of the novel, would work better for attracting the audience, but now we are back to squeezing a lot of story into less than 3 hours. It is probably the more doable option (financially) of all the options, however, and does leave the second part able to expand on the final conflict which could be done in 2 hours (the first part would have to be at least 3 hours, or the story will suffer too much).
3 ** I agree with a couple posters above who mentioned that the movie needs to be character driven, and special effects minimized to more-or-less background status. An example of where this approach has gone well is the Star Trek side-boot (or “reboot,” if you insist), which emphasized building the characters and connecting them with the audience. There was a lot of special effects in that movie, but luckily they kept it just under the point where it overpowers the characters. The strength here was that the writing staff included both diehard fans of the ST franchise as well as non-fans. In addition, JJ was good at bringing the direction of the characters to the foreground. A previous project of JJ’s (Lost) was heavily character driven, so much so that few really consider that TV series a Sci-Fi series (which it was, somewhat in a similar category as the original Twilight Zone series).
Anyway, these are some of my thoughts that I was compelled to share.
Really think Dune 5 is a better choice for today’s action-oriented movie audiences, but Dune 6 was the best book (IMHO).
I agree with you Arav Patik. Both the Lynch film and the miniseries were disappointments, but most especially the miniseries. At least the first half of the Lynch version captured the feel of the novel.
The miniseries got the characters completely wrong. They made the Bene Geserit look like whining, powerless little girls. They made Paul look like a spoiled little rich kid. They made the Fremen look like a pack of pre-historic cave men with puny crossbows made of twigs attached to their arms.
We Dune fans definitely need a new film version that will do the Dune novel justice. This will certainly take two or three movies to do it properly. There are many challenges with turning Dune into a film that will satisfy audiences. As Arav pointed out, if split into two (or more) movies, where do you end the first and start the second? Another issue is voice-overs to convey a character’s unspoken thoughts and observations. This may be considered bad form in film, but it is absolutely necessary for Dune because, as with politics, people are always thinking one thing but saying another.
The new Dune film really needs two things: First is a director who understands the novels (this is where the miniseries failed). Second is enough time to tell the true story (this is a large part of where the Lynch film failed).
I hope that whoever makes the next Dune film will speak with lots of true Dune fans to find out what we liked and didn’t like about the previous attempts.
The thing I did like about Lynch’s film was the cast. The duke, young paul, Duncan Idaho (a great casting with a couple of minutes of footage) and the others … all great casting, IMHO.
I think the rights holders should pitch Peter Jackson. With his dedication to a project, his connections to New Line money, researchers, his wife’s scripting talent, effects people, orchestration etc., I bet we would get a bang-up production.
I’m firmly convinced the only medium that could possibly hope to convey the true grandeur and majesty of Herbert’s masterpiece is anime. Not the watered down, “animation has to be PG for kids,” Hollywood animation, but real, Japanese or French styled animation.
Forget the Lynch farce – I want to see Dune done properly at the cinema, not cut down to one feature length film.
I agree with the people who say this needs to be something like an HBO or Stars or Showtime mega-miniseries.
But there have to be a couple of rules:
1. BE CAREFUL. As an example, sand-colored stillsuits do not work. Herbert described them as “slick” and “grey” and out in the desert, the Fremen wore “Jubba cloaks” that matched more closely the sand color. The Lynch ones, while they did not cover the hands and didn’t include the hoods, probably to avoid hiding the actors’ faces, still had a much cooler steampunk-y vibe to them and were closer to the book’s description.
2. STICK TO THE BOOKS. Don’t deviate. Don’t invent new sh*t. The story is the way that it is for a reason, and that reason is “because it works that way.”
3. DO NOT CANCEL IT AFTER SEASON 1. Wait until after season two when the story really starts to pick up. Dune itself is a 3-season monster to begin with; at least finish the one novel before pulling the plug.
I don’t know if I’d have Peter Jackson do it since I don’t know how dedicated he would be to Herbert’s original (would he go after it like LOTR?), but Lynch’s casting had its high points (and some lows – reread Herbert’s description of Duncan Idaho and you’ll start to wonder if he wasn’t curly-haired and oriental… “house swordmaster,” anyone?).
I’d love to see it done properly just once.
I always felt DUNE was too much for a single film. It should have been two, at least. Learning of the 6+ hours of original reinforces this.
Dune is already subdivided into named “books” internally, why not break it up into three movies?: Dune, Muad’Dib, and The Prophet? It would work better than trying to fit everything into one. Remember, Lord of The Rings started out as a single book, it was broken up into three simply to make more money for the publisher.
Otherwise I think it would work well as a series like Game of Thrones or Rome.
Thw series was better by far from Lynch’s poor showing. Imagine what Peter Jackson could do! Whoever this guy is that has the rights has an obligation to the universe to have this work of art get the first class treatment it deserves!!!
Dune deserves the HBO treatment… 12-15 one hour episodes… enough time to properly tell such a magnificent story.
Having read the book when I was 21, I appreciate it more now that I am in my 50′s. I think HBO or possibly even AMC should tackle it, making it into a 12 part miniseries. The budget would have to be unlimited with Peter Jackson at the helm. Anything less would be a sham.