A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

Nerds everywhere seem mostly ambivalent

https://www.cnet.com/news/as-if-blade-runner-wasnt-enough-denis-villeneuve-is-rebooting-dune/

http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/1/14469524/dune-director-denis-villeneuve-arrival-blade-runner

The new Dune movie, being produced by Legendary Pictures, marks the second time the book will be adapted on the big screen. The first adaptation, directed by David Lynch (Twin Peaks) in 1984 only made $30 million at the box office and was scorned by critics. Prior to Lynch’s adaptation, cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to capture the world of Herbert’s book to no avail. The events and problems surrounding the making of the film were eventually collected and edited together in a 2013 documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune.

There is no estimated release date for the project at this time.

completely unnecessary!

the original is a stone cold classic

totally into it

this guy is a menace

it's gonna end up playing like Gods of Egypt.

This seems v unnecessary

Last (necessary) movies you saw [Started by Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz) in January 2003]

I guess I'm ok with this. I'm sure Villeneuve will make a visually interesting movie. The real problem is making some kind of good and coherent script out of Dune.

I'm not sure what qualities a movie needs to have to be necessary.

Dune is maybe the worst novel i have ever finished aside from The Hotel New Hampshire

ambivalent or full of loathing, nerds will show up

(also i wd probably watch for free at home to see who inherits the thong from Sting and Matt Keeslaar)

baron harkonnen is currently occupying the white house so there's plenty of latitude for villeneuve to play with heavy-handed allegory

could be watchable, but they'll probably need to make it a trilogy to capture everything. Also, please do not go overboard on CGI -- Dune is mostly talking and getting insight into what people are thinking, so if they do this right, more than billion dollar FX, they need good actors, screenwriter, and yeah the director.

like if they say "we wanted to make sure we got the sandworms juuuust right", it's gonna suck, badly

let lynch do it again

trailer better have exactly zero BRAAAAMMMMS in it
if there's a BRAAAAAMMMM with sandworms coming out of the ground trying to eat an ornithopter then basically, fuck everything

haha you know that's exactly what it's going to be like

It'll be told from the sandworms' POV

ryan gosling running towards the screen, jumping, the sound DROPS OUT, he grabs onto a vehicle escaping, a sandworm JUMPS out of the ground behind him, jaws snapping (and a second, smaller but lengthier jaw snapping after him ever closer), and that "dying engine" sound kinda comes up on the soundtrack.

title card

DUNE

tagline -- some things were never meant to be unearthed

SPICE

MUST

FLOW

coming summer 2019

Uh.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-new-dune-movie-is-being-written-by-the-man-who-wrot-1794046167

Variety reports that Eric Roth, who won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay for Forrest Gump, has been hired to adapt the Frank Herbert novel Dune for director Denis Villeneuve. Roth also wrote The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Insider, Munich, Ali, and many, many more. So even though you say the words “Forrest Gump” and some people get nauseous, Roth is still a writer who is respected and has worked with some of the best filmmakers of all time: Fincher, Mann, Spielberg, and Zemeckis, just to name a few.

This is good news.

Is it now.

Even if Roth has previously only written one science fiction film: Kevin Costner’s The Postman.

IS IT GOOD NEWS NOW.

to be fair, i suspect most of the problems with the postman were caused by costner's ego

i'm more concerned that this guy's track record suggests we'll end up with a solidly middlebrow dune which won't satisfy anyone. what's the point in a dune which isn't batshit?!

"...and Brad Pitt as Leto."

when I think of the best guy to helm a mushroom fueled sci fi epic I think of the dude who wrote forrest gump

nerds everywhere increasingly ambivalent

we're talking Robocop remake ambivalent

I note that this fellow, who is indeed an industry pro (to a fault, perhaps) also wrote The Horse Whisperer and The Concorde...Airport 79.

I feel like if Blade Runner 2049 bombs maybe this doesn't have to happen

At least not with that screenwriter either.

Well, it's still happening and...this is actually a smart idea.

https://www.avclub.com/denis-villeneuve-says-hes-now-making-two-dune-movies-1823660070

this guy started out so promisingly, and now it's nerdstuff til he's done

Gotta get paid. To be fair this is top tier nerd stuff, imo.

nertz to that, other filmmakers alternate lucre with arthouse

Kinda having it both ways simultaneously now. As much as you can for Mega Budget sci fi. I’m glad he’s around and doing these things.

LONG LIVE THE CHALAMET

Timothee Chalamet (@RealChalamet) in talks to star in Denis Villeneuve's 'Dune' https://t.co/CLKsqLD7jV pic.twitter.com/k6r8WvadDU

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) July 16, 2018

I'm trying to think of who they could cast to plausibly lose a duel to T.C. Paul Dano?

Smart move

I have just received Draft #4 of the DUNE screenplay from Legendary Pictures. This is for the first movie, covering approximately half of the novel DUNE. I'm very excited and pleased about this, and I'm beginning to burn the midnight oil. pic.twitter.com/nIfgb2zJ2J

— Brian Herbert (@DuneAuthor) July 23, 2018

Feel like Brian Herbert being very excited and pleased about the dune screenplay is a bad sign.

Oh my god yes, get him away from it!
"DuneAuthor" as his Twitter handle, what a nerve.

If I wanted to read the Dune series should I stop at Chapterhouse or are their post Frank Herbert books worth reading?

The consensus is that the post-FH books are pretty weak fanfic at best. Certainly when I picked one of them up in a bookstore I found the writing cringeworthy, and apparently the stories are not much chop ("you know how they ended up banning thinking machines? well here's a story where a thinking machine went bad and t was bad for humanity so they fought back and outlawed them").

Ok so basically like ‘Solo’ then, got it, thanks.

I never got further than ‘Children’ and that was years ago. I wouldn’t mind revisiting them.

I think I have about 150 pages or so left to read in Chapterhouse Dune. I stopped reading it about 20 years ago, every once in a while I have the urge to go back and finish it. I still have the book on the bookshelf with the bookmark where I stopped.

Dave Bautista as Beast Rabban

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dave-bautista-joins-timoth-e-chalamet-denis-villeneuves-dune-1174273

(Kinda brilliant, really -- that was the only role I could guess would work for him and behold. Also enough of a blank slate character in the book that they can really go to town.)

And Stellan Skarsgard as Baron Harkonnen

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/stellan-skarsg-play-villain-legendarys-dune-1174870

This cast is getting more and more interesting by the day. Charlotte Rampling as Gaius Helen Mohiam.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/charlotte-rampling-joins-timothee-chalamet-dune-1176429

I saw the Lynch version for the first time last year and was surprised to find that it was a faithful and fairly straight-ahead adaptation of the book, hampered by apparently not having shot enough scenes, or else having had the connective tissue edited out by the studio and replaced by voiceover in a panic

anyway I'll watch this for Timothee

Herbert’s characterization beyond Paul and Jessica is pretty light,- even everyone’s favorite character, Duncan Idaho is barely in the book, so there’s a lot that casting can bring to the table. I like it so far.

somebody should write this up

I assume it's viking magick, but wasn't really explained yet.

This new TV series looks good, but also looks completely indistinguishable from Foundation.

Hahah I DID think of Foundation at least a couple of times. Saying this is that plus GOT derived does sum up what I suspect the elevator pitch was.

xxpost right there with you, no fkn idea why anything happened

Man I thought they de-aged Emily Watson, the resemblance of Young Valya to her is uncanny.

i was thinking the same thing!

what's up with the now crispy Truthsayer telling the Princess they found her being held captive - is she not actually the Emperor's daughter? is the acolyte who told the story about being sold into sex slavery the actual Princess?

the party/let's fuck before I go become a spice nun scene was the only section I thought was outright bad, at least everything else kept moving along

oops closed the spoiler tag too soon but I guess that's not really a spoiler of note

they should pivot in the second episode and give this whole thing the aesthetic and set design of Lynch Dune instead of nu-Dune, though

in the future, we don't need clothes ,we just wear holograms over our secret places

Only those of the Great Houses are trained in the art of Slooowww Loving that is necessary to mate with other Houses - so does the system persist.

the party/let's fuck before I go become a spice nun scene was the only section I thought was outright bad

Yeah what in the Matrix Reloaded was that shit.

Something about this reminded me of Serpent Queen which I didn't realize had a second season! Is this really not related at all to nu-Dune?

It's somewhat related

as much as 10,000 years prior prequel can be related

Nothing changed in 10000 years so it might as well be yesterday

everyone still has the same names & wears the same kind of clothes, time is a wheel, history repeats, it’ll be fine it’ll be FINE

we dont have timothee shamalama but we do have a former Calvin Klein model and uh, (checks notes) Emily Watson?

There's infinite sci fi dorks online arguing that actually that's exactly Herbert's vision but I don't buy it.

yeahhhhh no

which Herbert, though?

frank wd have dropped in some astoundingly weird new shit to juice up the vision, brian could never

frank wd have dropped in some astoundingly weird new shit to juice up the vision, brian could never

I haven't watched this, but I have read the original Dune books up until about the halfway point of the 6th book. This was years ago, so not entirely sure but if I recall that series spans around 8000 years or something like that and it definitely has history repeating itself but things do change (the Bene Gesserit no longer exist but something similar exists, there is evolution in technology, techniques, weirdness, etc.). But also Duncan Idaho is still around all the time.

As much as I enjoyed part 1, I think the compressed time line and changes in part 2 kind of blew it for me. Crazy kid Alia is one of my favorite characters and done right would be really creepy.

Oh well…

every second of laboured exposition i endure in dune: prophecy i am pleading for the giant worm-man to arrive (only 18,000 years to go)

The little flashes of the machine war looked cribbed from Terminator -- I have to admit I do want to see wormriding fremen fight t-800s

I was trying to remember which bad Terminator sequel that looked like - the one with Christian Bale maybe.

I need your clothes, your boots, and sandworm

they shd have ditched the murderous-robots stuff and directed the jihad at the bad effects of AI (all culture turning to glurge)

lol Mr Veg said the same thing re Terminator

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/world/europe/cop29-azerbaijan-oil-baths.html

I liked this second episode. With the setting-up out of the way, it's all down to skullduggery and I'm okay if this is the rest of the season's glide path.

Me too. Liking this show so far.

yeah much better

although, small quibble of kine - almost zero character reveals through dialogue, almost all convos are just about a) plot or b) The Stakes (tm)

Nice short interview with two of the younger Sisters:

https://gizmodo.com/dune-prophecy-episode-2-spoiler-interview-aoife-hinds-faoileann-cunningham-2000528804

Very Game of Thrones “can we fit some boobs into this exposition” episode

it's that winning HBO fomula

*formula

lol i was thinking the same thing

also i was like “they snort stuff in Dune now?”

Doing rails of spice off a stripper’s butt

Dune: Anora

Heeeeeeey it’s Atia of the Julii

The CGI in that last scene was shockingly bad for a big budget production.

Seen worse. Anyway this was — no pun intended — a very good slow burn of an episode.

Air jail, not just for bad dachsunds anymore

How to hang around.

I appreciate how this being a six episode season means nothing has really dragged and we’re almost done, even while having space to introduce a new character to immediately complicate things further.

Second season happening!

https://tvline.com/news/dune-prophecy-renewed-season-2-hbo-1235390594/

streets are saying robert pattinson is in talks for scytale...

Hmm, interesting choice if so! Thinly sourced report:

https://deadline.com/2025/04/dune-3-rob-pattinson-1236363305/

We allegedly have Leto II and Ghanima:

https://deadline.com/2025/06/dune-3-casts-nakoa-wolf-momoa-ida-brooke-1236436045/

"Son of mine."

"Yes, my charismatic father?"

"See, I'll be playing me all over again but you'll be playing a kid who eventually becomes a giant worm."

"...okay."

Anyway, let’s get Duned:

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/dune-3-title-imax-cameras-1236448953/