Arrakis… Dune…. Desert Planet…
Source: WikipediaOh boy, they are at it again…
Peter Berg is attached to direct another big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel Dune for Paramount Pictures, Variety reported.
Kevin Misher, who spent the past year obtaining the book rights from the Herbert estate, will produce.
Herbert’s 1965 novel is a sweeping, futuristic tale set on the remote desert planet Arrakis, which is the interstellar empire’s sole source of the spice Melange, which causes immortality and facilitates space travel.
I’m a huge fan of this story. It’s the kind of sweeping epic that I can dive into and immerse myself in, to the exclusion of all else (sometimes that even includes food). Unsurprisingly, over the last 30+ years it has developed something of a cult following amid sci-fi fans. As a member of said “cult” I share my breathren’s high standards when it comes to interpretations and adaptations attempted by others. Which is why I’ve been pretty scornful of the recent attempts to bring Dune to the screen.
A lot of Dune fans might call me down for actually liking the David Lynch version from 1984. What one needs to understand is that this was my first exposure to the story, and even if Lynch deviated from the book in places, he still did a good job (at least in my mind) of portraying the style and atmosphere of that world.
It’s more than a little ironic that the Sci-Fi Channel wouldn’t know how to make a good sci-fi movie even if their lives depended on it. Their attempts at making their own versions of Dune were very flat. One only needs to look at some of their other in-house ventures to realize that this is par for the course (or even above) when it comes to quality from them. However, anyone who has followed the steady decline of the Sci-Fi channel already knows that the managerial brain power behind that channel have long since moved in other more mainstream directions, leaving its core audience to despair.
I can only hope whoever is given hold of this story for remake is cognizant of the legacy he holds in his hand, and pays it due respect. While the easy response would be for me to just not watch it, I still can’t help but feel irritation when someone sullies a good name.
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