As great and wonderful and awe inspiring DUNE the book was… the movie adaptation equalled it in the opposite characteristics of lameness. David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune was probably one of the worst Sci-Fi films I’ve ever seen. About 2 years ago I watched it again think that maybe I just didn’t remember it right…. nope… I remembered it perfectly. That movie just sucks.
Now, fast forward a bit… a few years ago the Sci-Fi channel put out a DUNE adaptation, but instead of making it a one shot movie, they made it a mini series (with William Hurt), and I just LOVED it. A much truer, vibrant, mythology exploring version of the DUNE vision that Lynch’s work (to be fair to Lynch, how on earth you do justice to DUNE in just one movie really is a tall order).
But now according to our friends over at Filmjunk, it appears that DUNE may be coming to the big screen yet again:
Byron Merritt (the admin of the Dune Novel forums) has been reporting that a studio and director are close to finalizing a deal for another Dune feature film. How would he know? Well, he also just happens to be Frank Herbert’s grandson. There’s no word yet on who the interested parties are, but I sure hope it’s someone big.
With an updated budget and effects (the worms could look just fantastic) I’d welcome seeing a new DUNE attempt… BUT… the same problem that existed with Lynch’s version still exists today. The DUNE story is just too big. Too much history and mythology. Too many characters of significance and importance. You just can’t do a decent DUNE story in the span of 2 hours. So how would they get around this?
The only way to do this right is to split it up into at least 2 movies. The problem is, I really don’t think any studio will invest or risk 2 full movie commitments on a project like DUNE since there is no guarantee it’ll find a large enough audience. So I just don’t think this will happen.
