LogInIt was very different from what we know now.
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The Dune movies as we know them have been through countless challenges before they received their positive recognition in Denis Villeneuve's hands. Prior to that, there was David Lynch's 1984 film, which was considered one of the worst that year by some.
Even earlier, an attempt was made by Ridley Scott to bring Frank Herbert's novel to the big screens but it was unsuccessful. Here is a little historical excursus: in 1976, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights to Dune and asked Herbert to write a new screenplay, which turned out to be a little too long.
Then, he hired director Ridley Scott, known for Alien, Blade Runner, and other famous movies, with Rudy Wurlitzer writing the screenplay. We knew that Scott dropped out of the project after seven months, but now we can finally learn what his ideas were.
Thanks to Tue Nguyen, a 133-page October 1980 draft of Scott's Dune film written by Wurlitzer was discovered in the Coleman Luck archives at Wheaton College (via IGN.) But if you're a fan of the universe, you might want to steer clear of this one.
"The Dune adaptation was one of the most difficult jobs I’ve ever done," Wurlitzer told Prevue in 1984. "It took more time to break it down into a working outline than to write the final script. I believe we kept to the spirit of the book but, in a sense, we rarefied it. We interjected a somewhat different sensibility."
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"We did a script, and the script is pretty fucking good," Scott shared with Total Film in 2021. So what went wrong? According to Universal Pictures executive Thom Mount, "Rudy’s version of the script did not receive unanimous, glowing enthusiasm."
Wurlitzer condensed Herbert's narrative, often diverging from it, omitting some details and introducing others. For example, he entertained the idea of incest between Paul and his mother Jessica in one version; not the one newly found, but still.
"In one draft I introduced some erotic scenes between Paul and his mother, Jessica," he admitted to Prevue. "I felt there was always a latent, but very strong, Oedipal attraction between them, and I took it one note further. It went right in the middle of the film, as a supreme defiance of certain boundaries, perhaps making Paul even more heroic for having broken a forbidden code."
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"He wanted to do an incest movie!" Herbert said to The Sacramento Bee in 1982. "Can you imagine the effect that would have had on the Dune fans?"
Paul himself was a little different: more assertive, active, but also "too much of a perfect Messiah," according to screenwriter Ian Fried. "It's very hard to relate to him. It's not clear, based on this take on the material, that Paul's even the main character."
The script ends with Jessica calling a giant sandworm that Paul would presumably ride.
Overall, IGN believes Wurlitzer and Scott's version "presents Paul in an even more unflattering light."
"He's less a benign prince reluctantly swept into the role of brutal warlord and more a confident young man accepting of his destiny to become a universal dictator."
Wurlitzer's script, although not finished, is darker and more mature than what we eventually saw, and that might be why it didn't receive much love.
"I don't think it would have made Dune fans happy," said Mark Bennett, the creator of a Dune fan site. "Too many deviations from the novel and too much 'magic,' something that Herbert's novel avoids. A bit like the Lynch Messiah script, without the second half you don't know how things would have played off. I'm assuming that Part 2 would have been a guerrilla war with the Harkonnens, Paul and Feyd would have had their duel at the end, then Paul becomes Emperor… Who has ruled the Universe since the Emperor died?"
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If you want to see what exactly the script does to the movie, check out IGN's summary. Alos, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.