19 Interesting And Amazing Facts About "Dune" That Make The Movie 100x Cooler
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Denis Villeneuve's Dune is set to bring Frank Herbert's novel to life. Whether you're new to the lore, or a longtime fan, this film looks to be an epic generational staple for the future.
So let's dive straight into the 19 interesting and amazing facts that make Dune 100x cooler:
1.The movie is based on the first half of a stellar science fiction novel, Dune. It was written by Frank Herbert and came out in 1965.
2.The title comes from the sand dunes on the beach near Florence, Oregon.
Herbert was roaming around the dunes for a story he was doing on the US Department of Agriculture's plan to "stabilise the shifting sands by introducing European beach grass." It was then he got the idea to develop a story where ecology too plays an important role.
3.Denis Villeneuve wanted to make the film with strong female characters. The screenwriter Eric Roth asked him, "What would be the most important thing that we should bring upfront in this adaptation?” He answered, "Women."
4.The character of Dr. Kynes was modified in the movie. In the books, Dr. Kynes is a white male, but in the movie, Dr. Kynes is a Black woman.
5.It took three and a half years and approximately $165 million to make this movie.
6.Making the Dune movie was a longstanding dream of Villeneuve. In fact, he wanted to make this movie ever since he first read the book when he was 14 years old.
7.The successful direction of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 gave Villeneuve confidence that he was experienced enough to tackle an ambitious project like Dune.
Since the past two attempts of adapting this book for the big screen had failed spectacularly, Villeneuve didn't want to take chances with this one. He said, "Once I did Blade Runner, I had the chops, skill, and the knowledge to be able to tackle something that was this big of a challenge. I knew that I was ready to tackle this. I knew that I was able to do it.”
8.While working on Blade Runner 2049 with Zimmer, Villeneuve talked about his teenage dream of making a Dune film, and Zimmer immediately hopped on as he, too, was a big fan of the book.
9.Hans Zimmer is such a big fan of the book that he declined to work on Tenet with his longtime collaborator Christopher Nolan and chose to score Dune.
This was the first time since The Prestige that Nolan's movie wasn't scored by Zimmer.
10.Hans Zimmer has also composed a second soundtrack for the movie. He wrote original music for The Art and Soul of Dune, a making-of book written by the movie’s executive producer, Tanya Lapointe.
This is the first time he has written original music for a literary work.
11.Dune's cinematographer, Greig Fraser, won an Emmy for The Mandalorian. He is also working on the upcoming superhero flick The Batman.
12.Denis Villeneuve didn't conduct auditions for the role of Paul Atreides. He handpicked Timothée Chalamet for the role.
Villeneuve said, "He has an insane charisma. Timothée has been gifted by the gods of cinema."
13.As soon as Chalamet got a whiff that the Dune movie was finally happening, he set up a Google alert for the movie and then went to Cannes to meet Villeneuve.
He stated in an interview, "I can’t pretend that I was sitting there evaluating whether I wanted to do this or not. It’s very obvious, just the opportunity to work with Denis. I’m a huge fan.”
14.Josh Brolin, who worked with Villeneuve on Sicario, signed up without reading the script. “I think I pretended to read it” is how Brolin recalls things.
15.The production designer of Dune, Patrice Vermette, used Google Earth to shortlist locations for shooting the scenes set on the desert planet Arrakis. Deserts in Iran, Chad, Mauritania, and Libya were some of the locations shortlisted.
16.They finally settled on the famous Wadi Rum valley in Jordan (which was also the shooting location for Lawrence of Arabia and The Martian).
17.But Wadi Rum posed a new problem. It lacked dunes! So the crew "collected samples of sand from Jordan in water bottles so they could match its color to another location." This brought them to the vast and desolate desert of Rub’ al Khali in Abu Dhabi.
18.The set of the movie was built at Origo Studios outside Budapest. It was so large that Rebecca Ferguson kept getting lost.
19.The movie had its official world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a mind-blowing seven-minute standing ovation.
The Academy Awards / Via giphy.com
