Friday 14 February 2014

Indie Trailer Spotlight: Jodorowsky's Dune

Sony Classics is releasing a documentary about the making of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, considered one of the most influential films never made.


Long story short, Jodorowsky got his hands on the movie rights to Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi bestseller Dune. He hired French comics artist Moebius, and Swiss Artist HR Giger to design the film, while American Dan O'Bannion was to work on the special effects.

The project kept getting bigger and bigger, and more ambitious, but everything came to a screeching halt, allegedly when the project couldn't land an American distributor. (They may have been turned off by Jodorowsky's trippy surrealistic films like El Topo and Holy Mountain.)

Anywhoo, the people working on Dune went on to make things like Alien, Blade Runner, and their influence can still be seen in movies to this day.

Personally, I saw some of Jodorowsky's work in film school, and while visually he might have created something impressive, I'm not sure if he was able to pull off the complex narrative in a coherent, or at least understandable fashion.

Anyway, the full story should be interesting to see and hear.

3 comments:

  1. I saw some of Jodorowsky's work in film school, and while visually he might have created something impressive, I'm not sure if he was able to pull off the complex narrative in a coherent, or at least understandable fashion.

    Thank goodness they ended up getting David Lynch, then.

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  2. Lynch's version had its own problems. It's probably impossible to do as a feature, & even the miniseries version seemed limited compared to the novel.

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  3. Rainforest Giant18/2/14 9:05 pm

    Furious,
    Looking at what they produced later in their careers, I think they would have produced something we'd still be talking about.

    Rainforest Giant

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