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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.
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
I know a lot of people who start reading the Dune series and get lost after Children of Dune. I tell them to keep going, but always warn them of that darn 4th one.
As for the new series, I think it's cool, but I just couldn't get into the 6 hour "Dune" mini-series. I kept thinking after watching the first part "Hey, if I had just watched Lynch's version, it'd be over and I could go to bed." I also was very put off by the fairly obvious compositing when Paul was in the desert with his mom. It just screamed "We're in a movie studio!"
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
if they get back the girl who played Chani. Double her pay!
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
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.)
"God Emperor of Dune! was the best one. The whole point of the first three books, besides telling a story was to set up book 4. The series wouldn't have been as good as it was if it wasn't for the ideas he put forth in book four and carried out through the last two. He really goes out of his way to drive home both the advances and the risks of all the exploration that gets done after "God Emperor".
Mr. Spey
Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.
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.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
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.
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