10 Movie Adaptations That Clearly Hated The Source Material

5. Dune

For a man who's made a lot of weird movies across his career, David Lynch's strangest film continues to be Dune, precisely because of how normal it is. The picture was Lynch's one real foray into the studio system and blockbuster filmmaking, a big-screen adaptation of the sci-fi classic of the same name.

The problem was right there though: the director famously has no interest in sci-fi stories or worlds (partly the reason he also turned down the chance to helm Return of the Jedi - yep, that almost happened), which is a problem when you're adapting a novel as dense and indebted to the genre as Dune.

He gave it his best shot, but would later admit:

“I started selling out on Dune. Looking back, it’s no one’s fault but my own. I probably shouldn’t have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world.”

Lynch saw the ability to create his own world using Dune as a structure, but in the end the studio took that away from him by disallowing him final-cut privileges.