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Sci Fi Gives Green Light To "Children of Dune"
fooguy writes "Our friends at the Sci Fi Channel have given the Green Light to begin production of Children of Dune. According to the release, 'The miniseries begins production in Prague in April 2002 and is slated to air in 2003. Dune adapter John Harrison wrote the script, based on "Dune Messiah" and "Children of Dune," the second and third novels in Frank Herbert's six-volume Dune Chronicles series. Richard P. Rubinstein comes back on board as executive producer. The sequel will continue the story of the Atreides family and recount the fall of Paul's empire, with the future resting in the hands of Paul's heirs, his twin children."
The previous miniseries suffered from the problem that they kept forgetting that Dune was a desert; hopefully enough fans can remind them of that fact that it might not be such a problem this time.
And hopefully the miniseries will be better than the "Dune: House X" series (for the assortment of values of X).
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
What are all the whiners going to do? It wouldn't be Dune without cries of, "The movie was better!"
On a more serious note, I wonder how well the rest of the books will translate. I thought they were a lot less "action-packed" than the first book, which is saying a lot.
Twostep
There are 10 different types of people in this world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.
The book is 90% interior dialog. A lot of it is actually important to the overall Dune world though. I wonder how they will handle that? Probably ignore it. Children of Dune is far more filmable, so I imagine that's where they will spend screen time.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
This is great news. I hope that he'll get a chance to faithfully reproduce the whole series on-screen. I can't wait for Leto's transformation. The execs at Sci-fi get my vote - I'll be buying this one on DVD...
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Re-watched the remake Dune last weekend. Forgot how bad the Special Effects were ;) Nothing like the slow, blocky shields...
I'm hoping that this can be slightly more interesting... less inner monologue... but if you haven't read any of the books I simply don't see how it will be successfull.
The big problem with the miniseries was that the actor playing Gurney Halleck was absolutely horrible. I guess it's partly because I can't see anyone but Patrick Stewart as him(one of the only redeeming features of David Lynch's debacle). At no time during the series, did I believe that he was an elite fighter of any kind.
Also, neither the movie or the miniseries did Duncan Idaho justice. In the novels, he's a badass but he doesn't even do anything in the miniseries. Richard Jordan was just too old to play him in the original movie. The actor portraying him in the miniseries just wasn't given enough screen time.
if they get back the girl who played Chani. Double her pay!
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Probably reduced to two or three. But Ix. I want to see Ix.
Wow, it's great to see a project like this in a small town like Prague, Oklahoma!
Not to dispute the whole Fremen == Islam && spice == oil bit, but the whole business with Osama shows an example of how...
1) A sci-fi writer can predict events decades in the future, and weave them into their novels, or...
2) The human mind is capable of finding coincidences in the darnedest places.
Weirding Modules??? That was only in Lynch's Dune. Weirding Ways is supposed to be the martial art of Fremen.
It's good to see that Slashdot's efficiency of ruining endings has not fallen. Granted, many people may have read the books, but some have not. Anyone want to ruin the end of Cryptonomicon before I'm done?
Actuall, the weirding way is the freeman word for the martial arts for the Benie Geserit (sp?), which, of cource, Jessica and Paul teach them.
The weirding modules were never in the books as I recall. The miniseries was more accurate concerning the weirding way as compared to the original movie. I think that it is a concept that is very hard to get accrossed in a movie, where the audience will often lack the background information that can be given in a book.
In the book, the weirding way is mroe focused on the nerves and muscles of the body to allow a person much more precise control of their body. It always seems to me that the weirding way is simply an extension on Bene Gesserit Prana Bindu training that focuses on combat.
While the miniseries di have its faults, this is one part that they got much more correct than did the original movie.
Hockey - Canada's gift to the world
You just know everyone is going to use this for a "The Movie Sucked!" vs. "The miniseries sucked!" flamefest. Let's just hope these people don't organize into rival houses and fight for control of the world's supply of Dune criticism...
(My take on the whole thing as someone who hasn't gotten around to reading the books (which are sitting with the rest of the classic sci-fi books I haven't read yet) is that things in the movie make more sense after watching the miniseries, and that the miniseries has more emotional depth than the movie. And despite its constant darkness, the movie seems rather upbeat, to the point of silly humor at times, not even counting the screwed up ending. I found the miniseries to be much more subtle, and that made it preferable to the movie for me.)
Hopefully they won't mangle the story as badly ..
..
.. and now they're going to mangle LOTR.
as they did the first time. Am I the only one
that would like to see producers / screenwriters /
directors *stop* inserting their creative fancies
in to classic works such as Dune or LOTR?
And, if anyone out there for the SciFi channel
is reading - please - don't dress the mentats
up as a bishop from a five and dime chess set
they really deserve a little more than that,
I think. Tho both attempts at making a movie
from the book (the DeLaurentis and the recent
SciFi) took quite a few liberties with the story,
I think the DeLaurentis productions costume work
was excellent. The SciFi production looked like
nothing so much as a third grader's costume
party.
Blah
Blah
Blah
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Bwaaahaahaa!!!
;)
And of course Moby Dick is really a metaphorical foretelling of Operation Eternal Snipe-Hunt, where the Whale symbolizes Al Qaeda, Captain Ahab is obviously G.W. Bush and his cabinet. The loss of Ahab's leg is the destruction of the Twin Towers, and the Maori warrior is allegorical of the 'Global Coalition' bent on destroying the White Whale.. Arrgh! Matey!!
Then there's the crew, all of whom have different motivations for setting out on the hunt, and whose resolve waivers and falters at different times during the crusade..
Also, Moby Dick is a cautionary tale that the US government should reread, seeing as blindly following a demented leader is sure to kill everyone except the commentator, Ishmael..
Ishmael, Israel, what's the difference? It is clear that the US is doomed to failure in this enterprise, and Israel will rise out of the ashes of the Middle East - and we are beginning to see this happen as we speak..
Well, but what about the anthrax, you ask.. I'm glad you asked.. The appropriate parallel on the high seas is scurvy.. Yes, the lack of vitamin C which causes one's teeth to fall out is an appropriate symbol for the anthrax scare which has driven the US Government out of it's very offices, rendering the law making process virtually toothless..
Damn!! I'm on a roll!! My English Lit teacher would be so proud.. I should post this to www.adequacy.org.. They'd like it there.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Sci-Fi has agreed to shoot some scenes in my bombed village. I send e-mail to studio and they green light the project!!!! Internet is Great! visit http://www.kabulhalud.com for more information! Junis
Internet is Great!!! junis
Now, if anyone is interested in seeing a really fun film, go find Amelie. Also, film noir with some chuckles, Novocaine (w/Steve Martin) Both worth seeing a second time. Hopefully LOTR will not disappoint, after all the hype.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, there are some extensive interviews with Herbert saying that water is oil.
Exceprt from "When I was writing dune" can be found in the front of the paperback copy of Heretics of dune.
...there was no room in my mind for cencerns about the book's sucess of failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before exprienced.
It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.
It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.
It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economincs.
It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.
It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through dependence on such a substance.
Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water iteself, a substance whose supply diminishes each day
It was to be an ecological novel then, with many overtones, as well as a story about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor each of thes elevels at every stage in the book
But the islam stuff doesnt stop there. The Telaxiu are Islamic, as can be seen in the later books.
It's a formula for success that hasn't (to my knowledge) really been tried yet, so here goes:
Change Nothing.
It's really just that simple. Who is the target audience? People who watch the Sci-Fi channel...or to put it more simply, Us Geeks. And we're sticklers for detail. Don't believe me? Go to a sci-fi con sometime and ask anyone there who Nomad is. You will have your ears talked straight off.
I really wanted the miniseries to make up for the movie. I really did. But as I sat there watching it I couldn't help but say over and over, "Well that's wrong. So's that. She shouldn't be there. Those aren't supposed to look like that. He shouldn't be here yet." And so on.
Other bits were pleasing, and an improvement over the movie. Hearing the water sellers cry in the city was a nice touch. Cloaks over the stillsuits. Fremen popping up from the sand to fight. Details like that are exactly what we're looking for.
So my advice is this...if you're short on time, omit something if you must. That's entirely understandable. But don't change anything! Omissions are far easier to ignore. Having Irulan seduce Feyd was inexcusable.
If I were to take a picture of the Mona Lisa and crop it a bit to fit on my web page, everyone would still be able to tell it was the Mona Lisa. If I put her in a bikini top, give her a moustache and make the background Coney Island....well, it's no longer the Mona Lisa, right?
Please, if anyone at Sci-Fi is reading this...show this series the same respect you'd show any other work of art. Mr. Herbert wrote everything in a particular way to express a story he had in mind - you cannot improve upon it. All you can do is change it, and it's his story that we are fans of. So read the books carefully, and please don't paint another moustache on Dune.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The "deus ex machina" of the Duniverse was spice, with some dosing of mental sciences like the Mentats and such.
The thing that struck me as being the real plague of the "Plague of the Dune" spinoffs was that they were so hot on throwing in bits of, well, late 20th century technology.
The Butlerian Jihad was all about utterly rejecting the use of computers and artificial forms of intelligence. That is not the sort of environment in which it makes sense for people to get excited about the Galaxy Wide Web :-).
Frankly, one of the neat things about Dune was the notion of the people systematically rejecting things like computers. You have to think a little bit to come up with the sorts of alternative sorts of technologies that come out of people refusing to think down those paths...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
They may have been very weak on getting the story right, but the appearances of the characters still strike me as quite wonderful.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
... they hire actors who can act?!?!
I mean, in the scifi channel remake, everyone's acting was flatter than a pancake. That and the cheap-ass sets were the two most distracting points of the scifi channel remake.
Kyle MacLachlan (Paul, Lynch) had more talent in his left pinky than Alec Newman (Paul, Scifi) And what the heck was up with William Hurt (Duke Leto, Scifi)? Normally a fine actor, in the remake it was like he was on prozac the whole time! Jurgen Prochnow (Duke Leto, Lynch) might have been somewhat oddly cast for the Lynch production, but at least he had emotions!
Come on guys, be a little daring this time, try some location shots. Dont be weenies and do everything on stage sets.
That's why they're such vicious fighters. You wear a stupid hat like that, you'd kick the crap out of anything that moved as well.
dave
Most Arabs aren't black, even though they nominally live in desert areas. This is because of cunning devices known as clothes, which cover up the bits you don't want burned by the sun. Fremen are desert living Muslims, i.e. Arabs.
Also, the Fremen traditionally move at night and live in caves.
dave
And I finally noticed - really noticed - the line "He who can destroy a thing controls is." With that, and the references to the Empire crumbling without spice, it finally penetrated my thick skull that maybe there was a symbolic level of the Dune novels. Hmm...desert...strange substance on which universe depends...religious fanatacism...holy wars...might the novels have been metaphors for the middle east?
I freely admit it, I'm an idiot.
One more note: I gotta say, it was creepy as hell watching the Fremen chant "Jihad!" and "Muad'dib". I think a previous poster was right - Dune will mean different things to different generations. I certainly look at it in a different way after 9/11.
It's still the Best SF Universe Ever, of course.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I'd rather they did a miniseries of DOON - the Dessert planet"
A much more entertaining read....
And he shall pour a beer without head, and it shall be nothing
www.eFax.com are spammers
Well, the Olsen twins managed to play a child of about 4 years old well into their early teen years. Although how they plan on making one of them male is beyond me (not that any self-respecting geek would care, c'mon, these are the OLSEN TWINS!).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Pull out an atlas sometime. China is about as close to the middle east as England is.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Besides the fact that you just aligned some vague concepts with some more vague concepts, without explaining yourself, there's really nothing scary here at all. The term 'strikes back' is a common english idiom, and was rather natural for CNN et al to use.
However, just for the record, 'rebels' never drove around in landspeeders, and Luke was neither a suicidal pilot, nor was he attacking a weapon capable of blowing up planets...
Ben Kenobi / Osama? When did 'gentle Ben' ever advocate killing millions of innocent Empire civilians? Star Wars episode 4.5: Ben Gets Pissed?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Jews were in Chapterhouse, as the sect that had the secret alliance with the bene geserit. But the Telaxiu were Islamic. They spoke the language "Islamiyat" and had Jihad and Shariat and Powindah as ideas.
It wasn't just hinted at. Herbert came right out and said it.
Of course I don't want to fsck with Dune - it's an awesome novel and series. Frankly, I think the fact that I thought of it in connection with 9/11 is a GOOD thing - a novel for the ages should speak to us in many circumstances, disaster being one of them.
I'm the stranger...posting to
OMG, no. The Stilgar character looked like an overweight wheezer that could barely move. The Stilgar in the movie was far more believable.