News & Announcements
From Paris With Love - Unlovable?
Pierre Morel, the director/writer most recently tapped to run the newest big screen incarnation of Dune, is not inspiring me with confidence. His newest film, From Paris With Love, is out today and is being savaged by critics. Rotten Tomatos currently has it registered as rotten, with the tomatometer scoring it a horrible 31. Avg. critic scores rate the movie as 4.7/10. By comparison, Peter Berg (the director formerly attached to Dune) scored a 40 on the tomatometer with his last film, Hancock.
Have you seen From Paris With Love? If so, what did you think?
Have you seen From Paris With Love? If so, what did you think?
--posted by Mahdi the Bumble Hunter on Feb 5, 2010
Another Morel Interview - Chock Full Of Goodies!
Seems he's really hitting the internet PR circle. This time it is with Ain't it Cool News' Capone. To put to rest some rumours swirling about here on FED2k and elsewhere, this interview confirms Luc Besson is not the "mystery writer" working on Dune, and that Besson has absolutely nothing to do with Dune. The mystery writer will be officially named next week when work on the script commences.
Most interestingly, one answer of Morel's goes to show that there is still no guarantee his big-screen adaptation of Dune will be produced. It may yet be cancelled, like so many other past attempts.
"If I do Dune, which I hope" - there's the key phrase.
Morel also softly insults Berg's script, saying that it was "a little bit too far away" from what the fans were expecting.
As for his focus in the film, Morel states that he's been interested in the BG and how he's believed Dune is "all about the women". Shades of the CoD miniseries, perhaps?
To read the full interview, click here.
Most interestingly, one answer of Morel's goes to show that there is still no guarantee his big-screen adaptation of Dune will be produced. It may yet be cancelled, like so many other past attempts.
Quote
PM: It’s a way different experience. If I do DUNE, which I hope, it will be with Paramount, and I definitely will not have the same relationship with the studios that I would have with Luc. It’s just a different way to work and a different way to handle the production. I look forward to it. It’s just a new experience; you learn from new experiences. I look forward to that. Will I miss that freedom that he gave me, or will I replace it with something else? I don’t know.[laughs] We will see, but yeah the next movie, if it’s DUNE, will probably be without Luc, but we have other projects coming up together.
"If I do Dune, which I hope" - there's the key phrase.
Morel also softly insults Berg's script, saying that it was "a little bit too far away" from what the fans were expecting.
As for his focus in the film, Morel states that he's been interested in the BG and how he's believed Dune is "all about the women". Shades of the CoD miniseries, perhaps?
To read the full interview, click here.
--posted by Mahdi the Bumble Hunter on Feb 1, 2010
Zetumer's Script Completely Scrapped?
Over in the Duniverse forum Jasonspazz has alerted us to another interview with Pierre Morel, this time with IGN. The only real new piece of information is that the entire script by Zetumer has been tossed and Morel is starting completely from scratch with new "mystery" writers. This development pushes Dune further back from production than it was before. No script, no known writers, no cast, no crew, no schedule - we're basically back to square one. If this movie ever gets made I will be very, very surprised.
On another note, Mass Effect 2 was released earlier this week. Gobalopper wants you to buy it. If you have got it, how're you liking it?
On another note, Mass Effect 2 was released earlier this week. Gobalopper wants you to buy it. If you have got it, how're you liking it?
--posted by Mahdi the Bumble Hunter on Feb 1, 2010
Couple a' Things
No, it's not a Bunch O'Stuff, but it's close.
Last month, Wired magazine listed the top 10 sci-fi shows they'd like to see rebooted on TV. It's a strange list as it includes creations that are currently airing on TV or have successful ongoing film franchises (like Hero's and Batman). Oddities aside, they had this to say about Dune:
At one point the producers of the miniseries did pitch a couple of ideas for a weekly show to the sci-fi channel, but those plans were quickly killed. I believe a weekly TV show set either apart from the Atreides family or during a time period not covered by the novels could have a lot of potential but only if they hired a showrunner of David Milchian level brilliance.
Speaking of TV, Chuck, the Shai-Hulud costume wearing, Dune poster owning Nerd Herder, is back at the Buy-More for a third season. The first three episodes aired earlier this week, way ahead of the previously announced schedule. If you missed them, I suggest checking out the website for whatever TV station currently airs the program in your country.
The third and last item on todays Couple a' Things was brought to us by Dante. It's another Dune centric Penny Arcade comic. Check it out.
Last month, Wired magazine listed the top 10 sci-fi shows they'd like to see rebooted on TV. It's a strange list as it includes creations that are currently airing on TV or have successful ongoing film franchises (like Hero's and Batman). Oddities aside, they had this to say about Dune:
Quote
Although David Lynch’s bizarro 1984 screen adaptation took Frank Herbert’s interrogation of interstellar resource wars to the outer limits, the subsequent miniseries took the spice and ran with it. The creative results were inconclusive, although the ratings for Frank Herbert’s Dune were outstanding in 2000 — two good reasons to expand the late sci-fi writer’s universe into serial programming. Given our real-time drama of climate change, desertification and worse, the time is right for a recurring space opera about the politics of one’s place in space.
At one point the producers of the miniseries did pitch a couple of ideas for a weekly show to the sci-fi channel, but those plans were quickly killed. I believe a weekly TV show set either apart from the Atreides family or during a time period not covered by the novels could have a lot of potential but only if they hired a showrunner of David Milchian level brilliance.
Speaking of TV, Chuck, the Shai-Hulud costume wearing, Dune poster owning Nerd Herder, is back at the Buy-More for a third season. The first three episodes aired earlier this week, way ahead of the previously announced schedule. If you missed them, I suggest checking out the website for whatever TV station currently airs the program in your country.
The third and last item on todays Couple a' Things was brought to us by Dante. It's another Dune centric Penny Arcade comic. Check it out.
--posted by Mahdi the Bumble Hunter on Jan 13, 2010
Is Dune Morel's Next Film?
In what is fast becoming a tradition, MTV has had the first discussion with the newest director of Dune, Pierre Morel. As always, we have the standard "fan of the book" and "respectful to the original novel" lines it seems every director/writer of every book to film adaptation is contractually required to regurgitate when they are hired.
The real news in the piece is that Morel wants Dune to be his next project, but can't say so for sure. Since he was only just hired, there's only been one draft of the script, and no casting has been done, I'm still strongly sitting in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp.
The real news in the piece is that Morel wants Dune to be his next project, but can't say so for sure. Since he was only just hired, there's only been one draft of the script, and no casting has been done, I'm still strongly sitting in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp.
--posted by Mahdi the Bumble Hunter on Jan 12, 2010
Another Director for Dune
It seems the studio really likes the shaky-cam concept of Dune. EW is reporting that Paramount has hired Pierre Morel to direct Dune. This choice isn't one that fills me with confidence. Taken was good, but looking over Morel's other credits... Personally, I had a lot more faith in Berg.
--posted by Mahdi the Bumble Hunter on Jan 5, 2010
Dune December update
An update for December, which means Christmas is upon us - any ideas for Dune related presents? How about a Dune mug to drink your spice coffee from?
December's article for improvement in the Dune Wiki is God Emperor of Dune. This page is currently empty, so please get contributing with all your Dune knowledge.
News has been pretty slow for the last couple of weeks, no real news on the Dune movie, other than Peter Berg saying in an interview, "Dune for a variety of reasons wasn't the right thing".
Kevin J Anderson has recently given an interview to a French Sci-Fi website. Here's a snippet:
"Frank Herbert’s ghost is always watching behind our backs, but that is a good thing. He left an incredible legacy for us, and Brian and I have to be sure we maintain the quality and complexity. Thankfully, now that we’ve just published our 11th book in the series, the fans continue to follow us and express their enthusiasm for new volumes. When we create our stories, we have to stay within the boundaries of the Dune novels Frank Herbert wrote, but it’s a big universe and there is plenty of room for us to express our creativity."
Over on the official Dune blog, the latest entry suggests that the previously titled Leto of Dune will possibly be retitled The Golden Path of Dune, and will deal with the time between Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune.
December's article for improvement in the Dune Wiki is God Emperor of Dune. This page is currently empty, so please get contributing with all your Dune knowledge.
News has been pretty slow for the last couple of weeks, no real news on the Dune movie, other than Peter Berg saying in an interview, "Dune for a variety of reasons wasn't the right thing".
Kevin J Anderson has recently given an interview to a French Sci-Fi website. Here's a snippet:
"Frank Herbert’s ghost is always watching behind our backs, but that is a good thing. He left an incredible legacy for us, and Brian and I have to be sure we maintain the quality and complexity. Thankfully, now that we’ve just published our 11th book in the series, the fans continue to follow us and express their enthusiasm for new volumes. When we create our stories, we have to stay within the boundaries of the Dune novels Frank Herbert wrote, but it’s a big universe and there is plenty of room for us to express our creativity."
Over on the official Dune blog, the latest entry suggests that the previously titled Leto of Dune will possibly be retitled The Golden Path of Dune, and will deal with the time between Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune.
--posted by Dunenewt on Dec 4, 2009
Dune Editing news
There's quite a bit of Dune Editing news out there to catch up on.
First of all, the Battle for Dune team have announced a name change to their project. -FW-Wolf from the team explains:
" The name of a mod says a lot about it, what type of game it is, where it is set and what it is about. For sometime now just "Battle for Dune" felt like it had something missing, like it was just E:BFD but without the E:. So after much time and thought about whether we wanted this or not and how things would go after. No one can see the future and so we have chosen to alter the mod's name. So our new name will be, Battle for Dune: War of Assassins. We felt that this name is good and still very keeping in with what we are doing and what we want to get across."
They've also released some more images of the mod, including screenshots of a map set on Draconis IV (the Ordos homeworld), background images, renders of a new unit, the Atreides Repair Vehicle, renders of a Tleilaxu fleshvat, as well as other images. A selection of these images can be seen below:
The OpenDune team, consisting of TrueBrain and Xaroth from our forums, have released a 0.1 version of their Dune II clone, which is their first public release, and available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. For more information, have a look at their thread on our Dune Editing board, or alternatively their official site.
Another Dune II clone, OD2, has also been released recently as well. OD2 has been created by segra from our forums, and has been, in his own words 'ported by hand to c++, just to see if I could'. To have a look at this Dune II clone, head over to our forums here.
The Dune II Editor has just beenupdated to a 1.17 version. Created by Nyerguds, the Dune II editor also supports the 1.07 version of the game.
MrFlibble has had two of his creations uploaded to Abandonia. Both his Super Dune II: Classic Edition add-on for Dune II, and his Dune II 1.07 fix have been uploaded to the site, which is classic DOS games. Regarding his Super Dune II: Classic Edition, TotalAnarchy from Abandonia writes:
"Prepare for a new session of strategic battles on the hot sands of Arrakis with MrFlibble's mod, Super Dune II: Classic Edition. Now available in the extras section, this modification of Dune II will try to improve and expand the original experience, the way the players feel it should."
They can both be downloaded in the Dune II section of Abandonia.
Finally, some Dune 2000 modding news, with TSHyper releasing the first build of his HyperPatch. The HyperPatch aims to add keyboard commands to the game, and allow it to run at much higher resolutions, and the forum thread on it can be found here.
First of all, the Battle for Dune team have announced a name change to their project. -FW-Wolf from the team explains:
" The name of a mod says a lot about it, what type of game it is, where it is set and what it is about. For sometime now just "Battle for Dune" felt like it had something missing, like it was just E:BFD but without the E:. So after much time and thought about whether we wanted this or not and how things would go after. No one can see the future and so we have chosen to alter the mod's name. So our new name will be, Battle for Dune: War of Assassins. We felt that this name is good and still very keeping in with what we are doing and what we want to get across."
They've also released some more images of the mod, including screenshots of a map set on Draconis IV (the Ordos homeworld), background images, renders of a new unit, the Atreides Repair Vehicle, renders of a Tleilaxu fleshvat, as well as other images. A selection of these images can be seen below:
The OpenDune team, consisting of TrueBrain and Xaroth from our forums, have released a 0.1 version of their Dune II clone, which is their first public release, and available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. For more information, have a look at their thread on our Dune Editing board, or alternatively their official site.
Another Dune II clone, OD2, has also been released recently as well. OD2 has been created by segra from our forums, and has been, in his own words 'ported by hand to c++, just to see if I could'. To have a look at this Dune II clone, head over to our forums here.
The Dune II Editor has just beenupdated to a 1.17 version. Created by Nyerguds, the Dune II editor also supports the 1.07 version of the game.
MrFlibble has had two of his creations uploaded to Abandonia. Both his Super Dune II: Classic Edition add-on for Dune II, and his Dune II 1.07 fix have been uploaded to the site, which is classic DOS games. Regarding his Super Dune II: Classic Edition, TotalAnarchy from Abandonia writes:
"Prepare for a new session of strategic battles on the hot sands of Arrakis with MrFlibble's mod, Super Dune II: Classic Edition. Now available in the extras section, this modification of Dune II will try to improve and expand the original experience, the way the players feel it should."
They can both be downloaded in the Dune II section of Abandonia.
Finally, some Dune 2000 modding news, with TSHyper releasing the first build of his HyperPatch. The HyperPatch aims to add keyboard commands to the game, and allow it to run at much higher resolutions, and the forum thread on it can be found here.
--posted by Dunenewt on Nov 10, 2009
Update 09-11-09
Following on from the previous posts about Peter Berg leaving his role as Director of the new Dune film, FilmSchoolRejects have come up with a list of 7 directors that they think could handle creating a Dune film, including Ridley Scott and Steven Soderbergh.
Also, today sees the release of the audiobook of Dune: House Corrino, as read by Scott Brick, who's recorded many previous Dune audiobooks. Staying on the theme of audiobooks, I've recently discovered a video on Youtube which discusses the production of the Dune audiobooks, and also includes some of Frank Herbert's own notes on pronunciations of Dune related words. To discuss this video and the pronunciations, go to this thread on our forum.
Lastly, on our Dune Wiki, this month's featured article is Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, which is desperately in need of some more information.
Also, today sees the release of the audiobook of Dune: House Corrino, as read by Scott Brick, who's recorded many previous Dune audiobooks. Staying on the theme of audiobooks, I've recently discovered a video on Youtube which discusses the production of the Dune audiobooks, and also includes some of Frank Herbert's own notes on pronunciations of Dune related words. To discuss this video and the pronunciations, go to this thread on our forum.
Lastly, on our Dune Wiki, this month's featured article is Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, which is desperately in need of some more information.
--posted by Dunenewt on Nov 9, 2009
Neill or Neil for Dune, and other things
Now that the rest of the internet have finally caught up with my last post about Peter Berg no longer being attached to direct Dune, it seems Paramount have two more names in mind. First of all, Neill Blomkamp, who recently directed his first feature film, the South African science fiction hit District 9, and secondly, British director Neil Marshall, best known for the horror film The Descent, although according to Pajiba.com, whilst producer Kevin Misher is in favour of Neil Marshall, Paramount are more reluctant. What's confirmed on all the sources so far is that the movie will have a budget of $175m(USD), which equates to one million per page of script Joshua Zetumer has written. To put that into perspective, this year's Star Trek movie had a budget of $150m(USD), so that is a sizeable amount of money!
In more retro news, Techradar mentions Dune II in its feature on how fans are keeping old games alive. The page specifically mentions Dune II: The Maker (by Fed2k's Stefan), including a screenshot from the game, as well as two other remakes which will be familiar to visitors to our Dune Editing board; Dune Legacy, and Dune II: The Sleeper Has Awakened.
In other Dune II news, the game itself has recently been named as one of the five most revolutionary games in video game history by Peter Molyneux, a leading figure in the gaming industry, and currently the Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios in Europe. To read what Peter thought about Dune, and his other four choices, have a look at this article on the Guardian website.
According to a post on io9.com, there is now a course in Biology in Science Fiction being run at Kenyon College, involving the biology involved in the Dune books. On the post they provide links to the course's online content, which should prove interesting.
Finally, comic book artist Dustin Harbin has started his own Dune Book Club on his blog, which includes Dune cartoon work from various artists, including Paul Pope who was featured in a previous post. Here's an example from Evan Dahm, another featured artist. I seriously recommend checking out this blog on a regular basis for new Dune art.
In more retro news, Techradar mentions Dune II in its feature on how fans are keeping old games alive. The page specifically mentions Dune II: The Maker (by Fed2k's Stefan), including a screenshot from the game, as well as two other remakes which will be familiar to visitors to our Dune Editing board; Dune Legacy, and Dune II: The Sleeper Has Awakened.
In other Dune II news, the game itself has recently been named as one of the five most revolutionary games in video game history by Peter Molyneux, a leading figure in the gaming industry, and currently the Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios in Europe. To read what Peter thought about Dune, and his other four choices, have a look at this article on the Guardian website.
According to a post on io9.com, there is now a course in Biology in Science Fiction being run at Kenyon College, involving the biology involved in the Dune books. On the post they provide links to the course's online content, which should prove interesting.
Finally, comic book artist Dustin Harbin has started his own Dune Book Club on his blog, which includes Dune cartoon work from various artists, including Paul Pope who was featured in a previous post. Here's an example from Evan Dahm, another featured artist. I seriously recommend checking out this blog on a regular basis for new Dune art.
--posted by Dunenewt on Nov 3, 2009