Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited adaptation of the sci-fi series Dune crash landed into theaters and living rooms in October, and the crowd went wild. Wild! In his review for Esquire, Chris Nashawaty even went so far as to call the film “the best sci-fi movie of the decade.” Ticket sales at the box office were equally enthusiastic. That all surely came as a relief to the director as well as Warner Bros. studio, who decided to throw a chance (plus piles of money) at Frank Herbert’s beloved novel despite its reputation as notoriously difficult to adapt. (Plenty of other directors have tried and failed. David Lynch’s 1984 version was widely considered a disaster, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt in the ‘70s didn’t even make it into theaters. Years of production woes and a ballooning budget forced studio execs to pull the plug.) What seems to have spared Villeneuve’s Dune from the poor outcomes of previous attempts was his crucial decision to break the massive story into two parts. “Right at the beginning, I strongly recommended that we should do this in two parts,” Villeneuve said in an interview with Newsweek. Fortunately, the film’s financier, Legendary Studios, agreed to the proposition, freeing Villeneuve from the unenviable task of shoehorning the 800-page novel into a film that would inevitably have been both too long and too short. That left the first film ending on a cliffhanger, but now, audiences may be placated, as a sequel is officially en route. Toby Emmerich, Chairman of Warner… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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