Between “Alien” and “Blade Runner”, the filmmaker Ridley Scott was approached by the famous Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, who put him in charge of the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s work, Dune. But the project did not materialize.
Where we talk about Dune again … Ridley Scott version. In promotion for his film House of Gucci, the filmmaker gave an interview published in the columns of the magazine Total Film. And the person to release an interesting anecdote.
After the failure of Alejandro Jodorowsky to set up his adaptation of the work of Frank Herbert (on which we have moreover recently and at length returned), the project was taken over by the famous Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, who confided the reins to Ridley Scott in 1980.
“It’s always been adaptable” loose the filmmaker, defeating the long-received idea that the work, extremely dense, was precisely unsuitable on the big screen. “I had a screenwriter, Rudy Wurlitzer, who had written two films: Two-track Macadam by Monte Hellman, and Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid by Sam Peckinpah, which starred Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson. We had done a good job. on Dune, because at that time I was working very, very closely with the screenwriter. I always had my eye on what he or she wrote. ”
Why didn’t it work? Dino de Laurentiis wanted the film to be shot in Mexico City, which Ridley Scott refused. “Dino gave me the project, and we said to him: ‘we have a script, and the script is really great!” He replied: “It’s expensive, we are going to have to make the film in Mexico.” J I said, “what ???” He repeated, “to Mexico.” So he sent me to Mexico, to Mexico City. And despite all the respect I have for this city, at that time, it It was a dirty and smelly town. I didn’t like it. I went to the film studio, where the floors were dirt. I said to Dino: “no, I don’t want that to turn into test. So I gave up, and I went to do Legend, with Tim Curry and Tom Cruise “.
Dino de Laurentiis then turned to David Lynch. We know the rest: the stranglehold of the production on Lynch’s ambitions transformed the filming into the Stations of the Cross for the filmmaker, to the point that he still refuses to talk about it, more than 30 years after the fact. As to Legend by Scott, it was a massive failure at the Box Office, with just over $ 15 million worldwide.
