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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Via the good people at io9, my attention was drawn this morning to news that Dune is coming back to the silver screen. This is probably old news to many of you; we've known for a while that the man at the helm is Denis Villeneuve, fresh off Blade Runner 2049 (a worthy sequel to most everyone's favorite futuristic film noir), and just this week Deadline pegged a certain young Hollywood heartthrob for Atreides.
The latest news, however, is that Brian Herbert—son of Dune author Frank Herbert and an author in his own right—revealed that the first script will only focus on the first half of the novel. This confirms an earlier report that Villeneuve plans to adapt the book across two movies.
Herbert's epic sci-fi novel is set far off in the future—about 20,000 years from now—and it tells the story of an intergalactic power struggle between different noble houses to control a substance called melange, which makes interstellar travel possible. (That's massively underselling things, but you try summarizing a 400-page novel in one sentence.) Published in 1965, it has gone on to have a huge influence in popular culture; here at Ars, our favorite descendants are Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" and the frequent references to the litany of fear by Peter Puppy in the Earthworm Jim cartoons. (The recreation of Dune using gummy worms gets a notable mention.)
[...] By now you may have decided I am an uncritical viewer of all things Dune, so you may not be surprised to know that I am greatly looking forward to see what Villeneuve does with the story. Again, I think he did a bang-up job with a follow-on to Blade Runner, but it's true there's not much similarity between the two franchises other than the fact that they both take place in the future. Other Dune watchers are less confident—upon the news that Kevin J. Anderson (of Star Wars novels fame) was collaborating with Brian Herbert, Ars editor Lee Hutchinson told me, "I can't believe this is going to end in anything other than a nuclear explosion of human excrement."
[...] Legendary (the company behind The Dark Knight and Interstellar) bought rights to Dune about two years ago, but for now there's no firm timetable for the first film.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday July 28 2018, @09:10PM (9 children)
Will probably suck but the last bit there gives some hope. Legendary Pictures at least has a decent hit/miss ratio. And Sci-Fi had better luck doing it as a mini-series so breaking it two parts gives them a chance of getting enough of the story into it to avoid the butchery that would be required to rewrite around the bulk of the story being missing. The problem is it will still require a lot of butchering. Short stories and comics are much better candidates for translating to a movie. Novels should be a season of TV but the budget to do a season of Dune would be hard to recoup.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Saturday July 28 2018, @09:39PM (8 children)
Compared to a season of GoT, The Expanse, Altered Carbon, or even Doctor Who...? I wouldn't have thought it was beyond the realms of possibility...
The SciFi Channel version did a pretty good job, years ago, before the current age of high production value cable/streaming shows - OK, there were a few cringe-worthy moments, but mostly because of the common problem of well-respected (and presumably well-paid) actors turning into 2x4s when confronted by Science Fiction. I rather liked the way they approached it as "Macbeth in spaaaace..." which fitted by some of the rather stage-bound filming.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday July 28 2018, @10:23PM
It is amazing how Hollywood keeps missing the point on Science Fiction despite so much evidence. Special effects can improve a good story but are insufficient alone. On the other hand a good story will sell quite well with spartan effects. Look how long ST:TOS and the old Dr. Who have been selling. But Hollywood, and not just with Science Fiction, considers the script an afterthought after they have done the "deals", nailed down the "talent" (and now we know they nailed the talent in more ways than one), found the best cinematographer and director they can get, only then will they hire some second rate screenwriters to hammer out a first cut of a script which everyone involved will rewrite endlessly right up to the day they ship a final print and then keep going for a "Special Edition DVD Release." Look how many movies don't even have an ending in mind until they get to the point where they have to actually film one, then they shoot several and decide on one in the editing bay. .. if they don't spin again and do reshoots.
The best and brightest at work. They have to be right? Hollywood wouldn't just hand a hundred plus million to some second rate hack, right? It couldn't be they are mostly middling talents who get the jobs through nepotism and being willing to blow a producer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @11:42PM (6 children)
You think so? The 1984 David Lynch movie is easily one of my all time favourites, but the ScyFy miniseries I couldn't bear watching and stopped after fiffteen minutes or so. I have not read the novel, so I have no idea if a fan of the novel might have been disappointed with the Lynch film.
Regardless, the film had great acting (I can't remember a single actor in the movie that was less than great in their role), a timeless soundtrack and wonderfully bizarre production design with all its little anachronisms of style or tech. The overall visual style of the movie is quite unique, and special effects are top of the line of pre-CGI practical effects and are not overdone.
Meanwhile the ScyFy series had flat acting, made-for-TV-grade plastic-feel greenscreen sets and seemed to want to showcase every weakness of the CGI special effects of the time. To me, it felt like a cheapo knockoff of the original movie and repulsed me with its mediocrity.
I honestly don't think the original movie needs a remake. It holds up well enough until today, so unless the story differs significantly, it can only get worse than the Lynch version as far as I'm concerned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday July 29 2018, @09:49AM (3 children)
I also couldn't stand the miniseries. Paul was a whiny little brat, they put in some Paul and Irulan backstory that made no sense in terms of the narrative, and no one could act. Apparently their Children of Dune adaptation was better, but I couldn't face watching it after their first abomination.
I was positive about TFS until I got to the bit about Brian Herbert being involved. The sequels he and Kevin J. Anderson wrote make it clear that they only skim-read the original novels and entirely missed the point.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday July 29 2018, @12:56PM (2 children)
Actually, I think "Paul" gave a cracking performance - goodby too-good-to-be-true other-worldly moonchild, hello a teenager from a privileged background who gets dragged out of his comfort zone, has the fate of a world dumped on his shoulders and then, after being exposed to mind-altering drugs, turns into a messianic junkie warlord, nicely setting things up for the sequel in which he grows up and tries to rectify his past mistakes.
As to the Paul/Irulan backstory: without that, Irulan parachutes in in the last scene and does what she does without any sort of context (and, her actions in the subsequent books make no sense without some sort of chemistry between her and Paul) - plus, the new "backstory" is used to dramatise a lot of important information from the books. One reason that books have to be changed for the screen is to avoid great wodges of exposition.
Sure, its a lot lower-rent and rougher at the edges than the Lynch film (and has a few laughably bad moments) but look beneath the surface and it delivers a better, deeper story and provides a different interpretation of the book (as I said - "Macbeth in Space").
I bet you preferred Star Trek DS9 to Babylon 5...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 29 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
GP here. Maybe I'll give the TV series another shot, but most likely I'd turn it off again after a short while, regardless of the quality of the story. For me, in TV/movie as a medium the quality of visuals is a priority. For just a good story, I'd rather read a book.
If a movie can't be made with the visual quality it deserves, then it must not be made. This has often happened with science fiction stories and only now that quality CGI is affordable are we seing some stories made into films that had been in Hollywood's drawer for decades. In the history of film, science fiction productions have made do with minimal special effects and less extravagant sets - if the story allows it, the lack of a big budget can be worked around while still producing a quality movie.
ScyFy's Dune miniseries is an insult to viewers. These producers thought they could make an epic space opera with a small TV budget, either because they had no idea what the capabilities of the team and equipment they could afford were, or because they thought that viewers would accept shit quality because they were either fanboys of the channel or would embrace anything more faithful to the novel than the Flynch version. Or the most sinister explanation: the producers were fully aware that their production would turn out sub-par, but decided to go ahead anyway for some bullshit IP reasons, so they'd be able to keep squeezing the franchise later, when better quality was achievable.
Now that I have shed some light on my outlook on production values I'll have you know that I thought DS9 was the worst to ever come out of the Trek universe. Fucking soap opera doesn't magically transmute into something remotely matching my standards for good entertainment, even if it's IN SPACE!!111 Babylon 5 was cool though.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday July 29 2018, @09:37PM
...well, to be fair, its about 18 years old now, not only has CGI moved on but the production values & budgets of cable/satellite TV have seen a revolution. I guess I'm more impressed with the imaginative use of a small budget than the so-so use of a Hollywood blockbuster budget.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 29 2018, @12:15PM
I think the single biggest fuckup in the Lynch movie was that they decided having both Voice (psychological manipulation through voice control) and Weirding Way (basically martial arts) was too complicated and they combined them into some bullshit voice powered blaster attack.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday July 29 2018, @12:23PM
That might be the factor - it was somewhat more faithful to the book than the film, and less "way out". Sure, the effects were a bit bargain bucket and there were a few outbreaks of really bad acting (re-takes cost money) but the story made more sense.