There’s no real way to adapt Frank Herbert’s iconic novel “Dune” into a single feature-length film and director Denis Villeneuve isn’t trying with this year’s film adaptation of the story.
Instead, the feature is only adapting the first half of the famed novel and the film’s co-writer Eric Roth has nothing but praise for what Villeneuve has pulled off with the film.
Speaking with Collider, Roth confirms he’s already seen the finished product and got involved due to his work on Villeneuve’s 2016 film “Arrival”. From the sounds of it he wrote the earliest drafts with Villeneuve and “Prometheus” co-writer Jon Spaihts coming onboard to tweak it:
“I wrote a big, full, overwritten Eric Roth draft that had certain things special to me. It needed to be, honestly, cut down and sort of harnessed, and Denis did some of that, and they eventually brought in a writer – I was busy, so they brought in a writer named Jon Spaihts, who is a wonderful writer, who I think kept it grounded. And I think he [Villeneuve]… I don’t want to say Lord of the Rings, but I think it’s really pretty spectacular. He’s a visionary of his own kind, Denis.”
Roth also confirmed the final film is still very much the first half of the novel, even though his writing steered slighting into the novel’s back half:
“It’s completely the first half. Yeah. I didn’t know when we started, so I think I adapted a little more than the first half and started going into the second half of the book. But I’ve seen the film, it’s pretty much the first half.”
In terms of a sequel, Roth confirms he “wrote a treatment to show the [Herbert] estate what we could do with the second half”. However, he says he feels he’s “done as much as I can do”. Spaihts is also involved in the sequel’s script but Warners hasn’t greenlit a follow-up as yet.
Timothee Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista and Zendaya star in the film which is due to hit cinemas and HBO Max this October.