20 Things You Didn’t Know About Dune
5. It Was Nearly Made Into A 14-hour Long Movie Starring Salvadore Dali
If you haven’t seen the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune I implore you to stop right now and go and watch it. Cult arthouse film director Alejandro Jodorowsky was the first auteur to take a crack at the monolithic sci-fi tale. Assembling what could only be described as The Avengers of 1970’s culture, Jodorowsky cast Salvadore Dali as the Emperor, Orson Welles as the Baron Harkonnen, David Carradine as Duke Leto, Udo Kier as Piter de Vries, Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha and his own 12-year-old son Brontis as Paul. On top of the frankly bonkers cast was Pink Floyd handling the soundtrack, famous French comic artist Moebius on storyboarding duty and a then-unknown H.R. Giger on art direction.
The film failed to materialize at the Green Light stage after the studio expressed concern over bankrolling a movie with the famously eccentric Jodorowsky at the helm. Their worries weren’t completely unfounded, as Jodorowsky expressed his intention in producing a 14-hour long flick. This was on top of changing much of the book’s plot as, by his own bizarre admission, Jodorowsky had never actually read the book properly.
In spite of the film never getting off the ground it ended up influencing much of sci-fi cinema to come: The Terminator’s first-person view from the machine is credited to it, Star Wars’ opening title crawl was lifted from the storyboard and - most noticeably - Moebius and Giger went on to work on Ridley Scott’s Alien. It’s considered in some circles to be the greatest film never made.