The director of THE KINGDOM plans another sandstorm, Variety reports. I blogged a bit about it. Somehow I'm not seeing a stampede to the multiplex...

So they are going back to the beginning? Not carrying on from CHILDREN OF DUNE which was adapted by SciFi? I thought the SciFi DUNE was pretty good, but the sequel left a lot to be desired.

Back to the beginning, for a reboot.

I just wish instead of spending probably a couple hundred million dollars on a remake, David Lynch had been paid the rather insubstantial sum of money he asked for (according to an insider I trust) in order to put together his own extended director's cut of his version of DUNE for the last DVD release. Like Bob, I'm an unapologetic fan of this film, and wish a longer Lynch-sanctioned cut would come to fruition. Until then, my own personal re-edit will have to do.

Vincent

Ditto!

I'm with you on all counts there.

I have a dream project in mind that is not only impossible, but gets even more impossible with each passing year:

Instead of doing a remake, get as much of the original cast as possible back together and just pick up with DUNE MESSIAH.

Naturally, Lynch would have no interest in doing it himself, but I'm sure that there are young filmmakers out there who revere Lynch's version enough to find their own happy medium between something which feels of a piece with the first film and is still able to be way more accessible. The idea of opening on a shot of a graying Kyle MacLachlan as older and somewhat burned out figurehead messiah has a lot of promise. Ditto Everett McGill as an older, wiser Stilgar.

Plus, you get Alicia Witt as the older Alia which would be really excellent. Oh, sure, sure, the powers that be would pressure any intrepid filmmaker to recast her with someone like Jessica Alba, but still. This is a dream project so I can cast who I want in my head.

Now, to be fair, I've never met anyone who actually likes the novel, "Dune Messiah." Except myself, of course. In a lot of ways, it's my favorite "Dune" novel, but I need to add that it's the last one I ever read. I started reading "Children of Dune" and immediately lost interest. Perhaps I'll get back to it one day.

But, yeah. "Dune Messiah" has it all. Political intrigue, a morphing "face dancer," more dialogue for the floating turd that is the third stage guild navigator, romance between Alia and Duncan Idaho and best of all, a scene in which Alia gets into a nude sparring match with a hologram of herself. Plus, there's a dwarf!! If I remember correctly, a dwarf appears in Arrakeen just before a climactic "atomics" detonation. What could be more Lynchian than the sudden appearance of a dwarf before all hell breaks loose?

I remember reading a comment from Lynch (perhaps it was in "Lynch On Lynch?") in which he said that he had already started working on the script for the second movie. If I remember correctly, he said something along the lines of the fact that he found himself clicking with the second novel since it was more of a "neighborhood story" (I guess he means the way that the action centers itself in Arrakeen) and that the script was "really talking" to him. This makes it all the more enfuriating that a variation on what he would have done with it will never see the light of day.

Ah, well. I'm all for Peter Berg's remake. With all due respect to Lynch (and begrudging respect to John Harrison), no one has really managed to make "Dune" accessible to a mass moviegoing audience so they may as well take another crack at it.

The more the merrier.

I like "Dune Messiah" too. In fact I think the first three books form a perfect trilogy and Herbert should have stopped after "Children of Dune"

I'm also looking forward to the Peter Berg movie. Both the Lynch movie and the John Harrison mini-series are quite interesting but nobody has really nailed it yet.
And I DO think it is possible to make a great DUNE movie that is reasonably faithful to the book. It shouldn't be less than 200 minutes long though. (This could be a good possibility to create a shorter theatrical version and an extended version for DVD and Blu-ray.)

Here's hoping that Brian Tyler will compose the score, he did a great job on the CHILDREN OF DUNE mini-series (which is so far my favorite "Dune" adaptation).

Regarding DUNE MESSIAH, Lynch was actually working on the script for it when DUNE was released! According to LYNCH ON LYNCH, he was really liking it, too, a lot more than adapting the first novel. Of course, the failure of DUNE at the box-office put the brakes on the project. Still, it would be cool to get a glimpse at Lynch's unproduced screenplay for DUNE MESSIAH.

Vincent

I'm still trying to figure out just what could be brought out with yet another version of DUNE, a book once thought almost unfilmable but now looks to have three(!) adaptations. I take it that Sci-Fi got scared off of doing the other DUE books, as they get a bit "weird" after the first two.
Although, none of the other versions ever did show the climax with Thufir Hawat, which was a great moment in the book.

Still, it certainly would be better, and cheaper, to just have David Lynch finish his version. And I'd love to see a sequel with the original cast. Seeing an older Alia played by Alicia Witt would be wonderful. She's a good, and very beautiful, actress.


Hollywood is getting awfully strange(er) these days.

I never did read the books aside from DUNE MESSIAH, but is Thufir's final moment the same one that's included as a deleted scene on the special edition DVD of Lynch's DUNE? This may well be the greatest deleted scene I've ever seen, and in fact it seems to be a "finished" scene- that is, it's scored and has finished optical effects (i.e., all the Fremen have blue eyes)- it seems to have been deleted from Lynch's film at a very late date indeed, and yet oddly is not included in the "Alan Smithee" extended television edit...

Is this the scene you're talking about, Domenick?

Vincent

I completely agree.

It's almost a shockingly wrong-headed deletion since it provides an emotional climax that the film doesn't otherwise have. And it's not like the moment is all that long.**

Furthermore, it showcases MacLachlan's best acting in the entire film. It really seals his performance which I've always found to be underrated.


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While admitting that I've never had to edit a film or make it fit into a predetermined running time, I've always been baffled at certain cuts that we learn are made for "length" or "pacing." Especially when a trim of a few seconds is made which includes information necessary to the scene.

A good example of this occurs in Lynch-DUNE-wannabe, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK.

Shortly after Riddick makes himself known to the Necromongers, Lord Marshall has him hauled off to have his memory examined. In the theatrical version, there's absolutely no mention of why Riddick gets preferential treatment over the other characters in the film. You just have to assume that The Lord Marshall realizes that this guy must be the star of his own action movie.

In the extended, "unrated" cut (oooooo, coherent editing is TOO SHOCKING FOR THEATERS it seems!!), there's a brief exchange in which Lord Marshall has a moment where he feels like he recognizes Riddick from "some distant field." Not only is this a crucial bit of dialogue which provides a logical transition from one scene to the next, but it's a (relatively) nuanced character moment and a nice exchange.

....and it's only a few seconds long.

Deletions like that don't make any sense to me.

And then there are the big deletions such as was the case with DAREDEVIL in which someone thought that the film would be a hell of a lot more accessible if they DELETED THE ENTIRE PLOT thus robbing the scenes left in the film of any context or sense.

At some point, someone must have figured that the relative solidity of the plotting in DAREDEVIL was some kind of flaw and that audiences crave superhero movies in which every scene seems arbitrary and episodic (can we thank Burton's BATMAN for that?).

Fortunately, Mark Steven Johnson seems to have learned his lesson. With GHOST RIDER he apparently set out to deliver a preferred cut that was incoherent and senseless.