So, rumour is Villeneuve's campaign to direct a new version of Dune is bearing fruit. After Arrival was bought he gave an interview that Dune was his dream project, then Legendary bought the film and TV rights, then Dune Novels (run by The Herbert Partnership)announced they were in negotiations with a great director - now Variety is reporting that Villeneuve is about to sign and it will be a joint film and TV project like The Dark Tower is attempting. http://variety.com/2016/film/news/denis-villeneuve-dune-reboot-legendary-pictures-1201929280/ We'll see what happens. Berg failed to get his project off the ground a decade ago at the height of his influence, and the back up Morel never got anywhere either. The sci-fi channels attempts at an ongoing TV series were killed with the change of executives the year after CoD was released. Not to mention all the failed attempts in the 70's and 80's. Plus all the issues The Dark Tower has had pursuing a similar franchise set up. Until they start filming I'm going to take this with a grain of salt. Dune and Dune Messiah are my all time favourite books. While Lynch's film is deeply flawed and the first sci-I miniseries is hampered by budget constraints, the Dune Messiah portion of the second miniseries was damn near perfect, especially Alec Newman's portrayal of a man who is trapped in his own vision. That is exactly how I always pictured Paul in the books and hope that's how the new interpretation, if it gets made, embraces his character as well.
I really hope this is works out. I love Denis Villeneuve's work, particularly Enemy, Prisoners, and Arrival. I'm cautiously optimistic about Blade Runner 2024 directly because of his involvement.
I saw Arrival last night. It was good but not as good as I had heard. I saw Sicario (edit: why the he'll does Sicario autocorrect to DiCaprio?) last week - same thing. I didn't enjoy Prisoners at all. To me he's a competent director but lacks visual flair. Fincher was always my #1 pick. Nolan #2. When Legendary announced they got the rights I crossed my fingers for Nolan sdue to their close relationship but anticipated it would be Villeneuve based on his prior comments.
After Arrival (and the impressive Blade Runner 2049 announcement teaser) Denis Villeneuve is a hot commodity for sci-fi in Hollywood. We'll see if he manages to make this happen.
I really enjoy the books, and I loved the two Mini-Series. Honestly, to me the mini-series were just about perfect (I had no problem with their bugets or anything), and I feel there is no way to surpass them when it comes to adapting the first three Dune books(outside of a slightly higher budget I guess, but like I said I thought the mini series did well with what they had at the time). If they make another Dune movie I'll watch it, because I'm a dune fan, but I don't have high expectations. I do kind of want them to succeed, if for no other reason then to eventually see how someone would adapt God Emperor of Dune (the CG budget would either cripple them or they'd have to never show Leto as anything but his face) or Heretics of Dune (the book has weird porn-ish sections with unusually detailed sex scenes, presumably because Frank Herbert was becoming a dirty old man, so I think this book could really only be adapted on a network like HBO ).
^+1 I admire the visual aesthetic, most of the casting, and Brian Eno's music (not Toto's) in the 1984 film version plus David Lynch's use of dream-like sequences to convey the similarity of Paul's and the Guild navigators' powers. However, some of the elements that Lynch introduced were unfortunately to the detriment of the movie and the TV version did well to steer clear of those. I don't think it's a story that can be adequately told in a couple of hours. I'd prefer another TV version with a GoT-sized budget together with better aesthetics and casting.
It's been decades since I read the books. What book did the 1984 movie follow, or was it an amalgam of multiple books? I figure the involvement of Dino De Laurentiis made the 1984 movie as grandiose as is was. I never saw the Syfy miniseries', but maybe a trilogy of movies would work? Hey, that's it, get peter Jackson. He's great at making long book series' into even longer movie series'.
That's why the current model is (planning on) following the dark tower - a feature film followed by a TV series to flesh out the content. Lynch "followed" the first book but was no .ore a straight adaptation than Jodorowdki or Scott's versions were. Kyle McLachlan is a huge fan of the novel and has this story of how he signed to make the film thinking he was going to star in Dune and then was outraged when he read the script. He confronted Lynch about it and Lynch told him McLachlan's mistake was thinking he was going to be in Frank Herbert's Dune. He wasn't. He was in David Lynch's Dune. Boo to Peter Jackson.
Even though age appropriate casting has been becoming more frequent I still think you're gonna have a mid to late 20's Paul considering the subject matter, and the fact that they'd otherwise have to wait a dozen years to film the sequel. The dudes a fatalistic, murderous Messiah who cries during orgies.
If someone can ever commit God Emperor of Dune to film, I will be both thrilled and stunned. Easily the most unfilmable of the original books.
He's holding out for The God Emperor. It's the only role he feels is equal to his real life importance.
I don't really see that working unless the story were significantly altered. Dune really needs a movie trilogy to do justice to its complexity but I doubt it would garner enough of an audience in that form. I suspect it'd be an even harder job to promote now than in the 80s and it didn't do at all well back then at the box office -- in fact I believe it was a flop. It seems to me that HBO would be a more natural home, particularly if the later books were adapted -- and please let's forget about the Duneverse books that Frank Herbert didn't write. Oh yes, one more thing I forgot to mention -- they should fix the ornithopter design in the new version -- be it TV or film. I see to recall the Dune and Dune 2 video game versions of the ornithopters were much closer to what I imagined from reading the books.
Planes that flap their wings look goofy as hell, no matter how much some people are in love with the idea. An HBO series would be great, but probably cost even more than Westworld.
Actually, I thought the way the miniseries depicted that was pretty good, and it didn't look goofy at all.
The mini-series cheated by using vtol turbines on movable control surfaces. That's not an ornithopter, it's a really compact and weird helicopter. The way to do ornithopters is to model them after dragonflies rather than avians. Long flexible wings that beat so fast you can barely see them in flight. Indeed, it's pretty much how they're described in the book, I don't know why people keep insisting they look like mechanical birds...well, aside from the "ornitho-" prefix, obviously.
They weren't ornithopters in the miniseries. They only steered by moving the wings - basically turning the entire wings into rudders. Flight was still from the propeller props in the wings (like an advanced version of Harrier VTOL engines) that operated like the props in a hover craft (or the helicarrier in The Avengers) . And the Harkonnen ornithopters didn't even have that. IMO, if they made the wings look dragonfly like it could conceivably work. Have the wings beat so fast you don't even see them during lift, and then have them move into more of a delta for sustained flight.
Well, whatever, I liked it and would be okay if future productions used vehicles of a similar concept.
IIRC didn't LEXX feature bug shuttles that would work like an ornithopter? And they seemed to work out.