Pierre Morel Offers More Dune Details
Pierre Morel, who was hired to take on
"Dune" after Peter Berg dropped out, offered some more details about the project in interviews with
MTV. Although he’s a fan of director David Lynch, Morel says he wasn’t so much a fan of Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of the novel: "As a David Lynch movie, I loved it," he said of the 1984. "As a ‘Dune’ fan, I was not such a big fan." So instead, Morel says he plans to take his film in a different direction, one which will be "very respectful to the original novel":
“[My movie] is all about the first book. I’m trying to be very respectful to the original novel,” he explained. “But it’s a challenge; there’s a lot of expectation, all the readers will be waiting for me with their shotguns. All the non-readers will also be waiting for us, because it’s such a complex, rich novel and you have to make it accessible to those who have not read the book. So, it’s a tough challenge but I’m very excited about that.”
In another interview with
MTV, Morel talked about his direction for the film:
“Like many people, I was not fully satisfied with David Lynch’s movie in 1984,” Morel said. “I do respect David, and I think his interpretation and vision was interesting, but not what we [fans] expected. And I thought I’d give it a chance, try to do this, make it faster and more modern. I think that now, in 2010, we have the technology to achieve much more than David could do twenty-five years ago. I think it will be cool to try something different.”
Morel also talked about some of the things he’ll be changing, including the clothes and the way technology is presented in the future:
“Well, this is supposed to take place 10,000 years from now, so I wonder why people are still dressed like Captain Nemo,” he said with a laugh. “It feels very 19th century to me. I think the [character’s clothes] should be much more modern than that. That’s one thing [I’ll change]; that’s a basic thought.”
“We’ll try to figure out what things may look like 10,000 years from now; it’s all about reconfiguring the entire universe. Everything is going to be very different than [it is] now,” Morel said. “And we know from the book that there’s no more computers, no thinking machines. So a lot of the technology is going to be different. We’ll be working with design concepts, futurists and scientists who will give us a vision of how technology may evolve with certain conditions. That might lead us to another vision of the future – it’s not David Lynch’s vision, it’s not ours either, but in-between.”
"Dune" doesn’t have a date yet, but Morel says he hopes to make it the next he works on and added that they will be starting the writing process soon: "We start the writing process in a couple weeks; there’s so much to sort out,” the filmmaker explained. “[My ‘Dune’] is not a sequel to anything. It’s just a re-interpretation of the original novel."
