Right now, fans can experience Dune in theatres and witness Villeneuve’s adaptation of the novel many people once deemed impossible to film. However, long before Villeneuve was attached to direct Dune, Scott once believed the novel could be adapted for the silver screen, and his reason for backing out had more to do with location.

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Speaking with Total Film magazine, Scott shared that he intended to direct Dune between his other two sci-fi classics Alien and Blade Runner. “It’s always been filmable,” Scott added about Frank Herbert’s acclaimed 1965 novel, “I had a writer called Rudy Wurlitzer, of the Wurlitzer family…He’d written two films: ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ with James Taylor and ‘Billy the Kid,’ which had Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson…We did a very good take on ‘Dune’ because early days, I’d work very, very closely with the writer. I was always glomming the look of the film onto what he or she was writing.” Eventually, though, Scott decided that he could no longer move on with Dune because producer Dino De Laurentiis’ wished to film the project in Mexico.

“Dino had got me into it and we said, ‘We did a script, and the script is pretty fucking good.’ Then Dino said, ‘It’s expensive, we’re going to have to make it in Mexico.’ I said, ‘What!’ He said, ‘Mexico.’ I said, ‘Really?’ So he sent me to Mexico City. And with the greatest respect to Mexico City, in those days [it was] pretty pongy. I didn’t love it,” Scott recalled. “I went to the studio in Mexico City where the floors were earth floors in the studio. I said, ‘Nah, Dino, I don’t want to make this a hardship.’ And so I actually backed out and instead moved on to ‘Legend’ with Tim Curry and Tom Cruise.” The directing job would eventually go to David Lynch in what ended up being a nightmarish production.

Lynch’s 1984 Dune was a box office and critical failure, as the director was not granted the creative freedom he would’ve liked in order to bring his true vision to life (he even wanted to erase his name from the project due to the total misfire). But now with Villeneuve’s adaptation released this year, it appears that Herbert’s work is finally in good hands. Villeneuves’ Dune was the total opposite of Lynch’s, becoming not only a box office success but also being praised by critics and fans for its technical achievements and its far greater understanding of the source material.

While Scott’s take on the story would’ve been intriguing to witness, especially during a time when the director was coming off of the success of his other sci-fi films, it seems that it would’ve been tough to pull off considering the technology that was available at the time as well as seeing what Villeneuve has now achieved with his 2021 version. A Dune: Part Two was greenlit roughly a week after Dune’s release, which is set to begin filming in July 2022 and is slated for an October 20, 2023 release date.

Dune is now playing in theaters.

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Source: Total Film