Pierre Morel Looking at a 3-D 'Dune'

Pierre Morel has From Paris with Love in theaters next week, but the Taken director is probably making bigger headlines because he's been chosen to guide the new adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic, Dune. The filmmaker tells IGN he'd love to see the movie go The Full Avatar as a stereoscopic 3-D adventure. Whether or not that happens (I would suspect Paramount is dying to get more invested in that realm, though), it's one of the few 3-D suggestions I actually think makes a whole lot of sense. We learned that the last two Harry Potter movies are being up-converted, but so what? That's just tacking on the gimmick to raise ticket prices because none of the visuals were intended to be in 3-D. But this, which like Avatar is a whole other world, could once again raise the game for 3-D technology. Mostly, though, Morel says he just has to do something to keep people from thinking about the other Dune, released in the 1980s:

"It’s tricky. Everybody refers to both the book and to David Lynch’s film, which was in a way a monument to the ’80s. It became a huge event. It didn’t do well theatrically, I think, but in a way it kind of marked and printed an image on Dune. Everybody now who reads Dune reads it with David Lynch’s images in mind. "So we have to get away from that. It’s not a remake of David Lynch’s movie. We’re doing a re-reading, a brand new approach on the book, a very true approach to the book, the original material. So we will have to deal with trying to erase the image that David Lynch did so we can propose our image."

I'm not 100% on board with Morel as the director, but every time he talks about it, the move seems more and more natural. He also reveals to IGN that the screenplay will get underway next month, so this is taking shape pretty quickly.

Comments

[Jon]

The Full Avatar! I like that expression. But I think you should cut Harry Potter some slack. After all, the series is very 3-D friendly in visual terms. It's a compliment to James Cameron that they're going for it and I can well imagine they found themselves with a franchise that fell sweetly in to the new format.

I liked "Taken" and remembered Pierre Morel's name. I'm looking forward to "From Paris With Love". As for "Dune", it's strange that he feels the weight of being compared with David Lynch's flop. Perhaps no one has told him about the original Dune project which was to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky after his late-60s, early-70s films 'El Topo" and 'The Holy Mountain". Jodorowsky had Geiger (a decade pre-"Alien") design sets and costumes. Soundtrack by Pink Floyd apparently but no one knows where the masters are. The project never got off the ground but when you think of Geiger, Pink Floyd, Jodorowsky, and Dune.... Well, someone should tell Pierre Morel to get his researchers busy because that's the sort of 3-D experience I'd like to see.

[Trang/Rmihalko]

Hi,

Im a fan of the Original six books by Frank Herbert, and a remake is interesting to say the least. I was wondering if you had any basic contact method for Pierre Morel. I belong to one of the most active original Dune book fan sites, called www.jacurutu.com. I was wanting to just send a basic invite to Mr. Morel to come over and have a chat about the books and so forth.

If you know of any way to send an email or forward the website to him it would be great. Let me know at my email address if able.

The Spice Must Flow....
Trang/Rmihalko