Lacey Bridges
Denis Villeneuve. Genius.
“Dune” reboot. Never gonna happen.
Let’s be honest here. I’m short. Anna Kendrick short.
Okay, let’s be brutally honest. There’s about as much chance of a new “Dune” movie coming in the next two years as there is a storm raining jelly beans. We’ve all been hearing about this ‘redo’ for as long as I can remember reading Moviehole.
The Hollywood Reporter says that Villeneuve, hot off sci-fi extravaganza “Arrival”, is in talks to helm the on-again off-again on-again “Dune” over at Legendary.
Legendary, as you’ll recall, snagged the rights to Frank Herbet’s classic novel from Universal – who toyed for eons with the project before eventually concluding that it was never going to happen.
As much as I’d love to see Villeneuve bring to life one of literary world’s great science-fiction tales – and with the same amazing production design applied to his latest movie – I think this sounds like more of an impulsive studio pipedream than something that’s going to ever meet day one of production. Legendary want Villeneuve because, of course, he gave us that magnificent looking space-ship in “Arrival” and the filmmaker has, maybe even out of politeness, taken a meeting. But considering the twelve or thirteen other filmmakers who’ve been attached to the project in recent years have quickly scuttled from the project shortly after attaching themselves, you’ve got to wonder, will he stick?
I think the main issue with “Dune”, besides the fact that it’d be a huge undertaking financially, is that the previous film adaption – the 1984 film from David Lynch – was a big-time D.O.A. flop. Not even Sting could save it. Sure, it’s become a cult favourite over the years, but ‘cult favourite’ doesn’t usually assure investors that they’re going to get their money back. If it did, an “Office Space” franchise would be with us by now.
I’d be interested to see where these talks lead but let’s not get too excited yet. For starters, I’m still short – cuddle, Anna?
