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Frank Herbert’s Dune to be remade (again)

It might be one of the most celebrated Science Fiction books ever written, but screen adaptations of Frank Herbert’s 1965 classic Dune have typically been poorly received by the cinema and TV audiences. Certainly every fan of the Dune series that I know of believes that the true story of Dune has yet to be told, however it seems that Hollywood thinks so too…

Originally Peter Berg, famous for his directorship of ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Hancock’, was lined up to produce and direct the $175 million dollar franchise, however, he has parted from the project to direct (get this) a film adaption of the popular board game, Battleship (cue reviewer quotes of ‘total miss’). Step forward Pierre Morel, of ‘Taken’ and ‘From Paris with Love’ fame, a self confessed fanboy of the original series who recognises the intimidating task that lies in distancing the film away from other attempts. From Mr Morel himself…

“It’s tricky. Everybody refers to both the book and to David Lynch’s film, which was in a way a monument to the ’80s’….It became a huge event. It didn’t do well theatrically, I think, but in a way it kind of marked and printed an image on Dune. Everybody now who reads Dune reads it with David Lynch’s images in mind. So we have to get away from that. It’s not a remake of David Lynch’s movie. We’re doing a re-reading, a brand new approach on the book, a very true approach to the book, the original material. So we will have to deal with trying to erase the image that David Lynch did so we can propose our image.”

Personally I cannot agree more, David Lynch’s film is certainly up there in my film collection but is far removed from the source material, see Weirding modules and spontaneous rain at the end of the film, and the Alan Smythee version while interesting, merely confuses matters even further. That said it had some fabulous casting with the majority of the actors matching the book in almost every way, albeit Patrick Stewart as the skinny Gurney Halleck and Kyle MacLachlan as the bulky Paul Atreides. Regarding the mini-series from The Sci-Fi (or SyFy) Channel the less said about that the better.

What we need is a true retelling of the story and while some elements are going to be hard to bring to the big screen such as Bene Gesserit talent for recognising minute expressions and digging into their inner memories, the numerous inner monologues made by all the key characters, and the inclusion of some of the pivotal cast of the books such as Duncan Idaho and Stilgar; if the money and the determination to faithfully retell the true Dune story exists, this might be the new decade’s answer to the ‘Lord of the Rings’.

Oh, and no Sting this time because all I saw was a washed up bassist I wanted to kill (see Feyd-Rautha)…