Rethinking Dune: A New Script and Maybe 3-D
Posted 01.31.10 by reelz
Pierre Morel, the director of Taken and the upcoming From Paris with Love, was recently tapped to helm the remake of the sci-fi epic Dune, replacing Peter Berg. Surveying the the state of the project , he explained in an interview with IGN, he has decided to go for something completely different.
We're starting from scratch. Peter had an approach which was not mine at all, and we're starting over again. I don't think we're going to keep any elements of the Peter Berg script. It was good, actually. It was interesting. It was just not our vision. I can't tell you right now [who's writing it with me], it's going to be official next week. The deals are not done!
It's a daunting project, but he says he's taking the next few months after wrapping up From Paris with Love to really think it through. The key issue: How to move out of the shadow of David Lynch.
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.
That's a tall order of course, and some fascinating video interviews between Lynch and Dune author Frank Herbert have recently re-surfaced, suggesting that Lynch's vision of the planet Arrakis was not so far off as many critics have claimed.
Still, a lot has happened in movies and technology since Lynch's version made its 1984 debut, and Morel says he plans to take full advantage of the innovations, possibly including 3-D:
I'd love it to be 3D, of course. It's the kind of movie that has the scope to be 3D. Will they do it in 3D? I'd push for that, but I don't know. As a viewer, I've just been watching Avatar with my kids twice in the theater already and had a blast. It's an amazing experience.