SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.