Hey folks, Harry here... At this juncture in Pop Culture - we have still yet to get a great adaptation of Frank Herbert's DUNE. What brought this to mind was receiving the latest Collector's Edition of DUNE, from The Folio Society. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the David Lynch film. His adaptation is what I saw in the 80's that directly led to me first seeking out Herbert's towering work. I posted this:
And it got some friends writing me wondering about what's going on with DUNE... Do we have a studio with the nerve to adapt DUNE as Peter Jackson tackled Tolkien? Well last I heard, Peter Berg left a long gestating version of DUNE at Paramount, well, we knew he left - and then TAKEN's Pierre Morel was going to direct, but then Paramount dropped DUNE after him - although I had heard rumors of Neil Marshall circling it at some point... but as of now... Nothing.
So... What's up? Nothing at this point. Well, that's not true... there's this new edition of the classic work of science fiction. It comes in a metallic slipcase and the cover is a metallic buckram! This edition comes with new illustrations by Sam Weber! That's 12 color illustrations, 3 of which are double spreads. Now the neat thing about Sam Weber doing an edition of DUNE, is he's also the artist responsible for David Lynch's Criterion Blu ray release of ERASERHEAD!!! Now he's illustrating DUNE. Funny how the world works isn't it.
Here's more of Sam's work:
In addition to Sam Weber's art - there's a Map of Arakis included as Endpapers illustrated by Martin Sanders:
In addition, you get a limited edition poster of the cover art, which is quite nice!
But really - this is about having a very finely crafted edition of this landmark science fiction novel. In a way, I'm relieved that everything on DUNE fell apart. I wasn't real enthused about any of the director choices mentioned, other than Neil Marshall, and there's that film geek in me that will always long to go back in time and fully finance Alejandro Jodorowsky's version of DUNE.
You can only score this edition directly from THE FOLIO SOCIETY here!
Now - Time to dream big Talkbackers... How would you like to see DUNE mounted? HBO series? A 6 film series? Who would you want directing, starring, handling the VFX?
