I found David Lynch’s lost Dune II script

David Lynch’s 1984 sci-fi impressive Dune is– in lots of methods– a misbegotten botch task. Still, just like more than a couple of ineffectively enthusiastic movies before it, the creative flourishes Lynch implanted onto Frank Herbert’s vast Machiavellian story of warring area dynasties have actually made it real cult timeless status. Today, fans of the movie, which made a paltry $30 million at package workplace and genuinely bruising evaluations upon its release, still question what Lynch would have done if offered the chance to adjust the next 2 books in Herbert’s cycle: Dune Messiah and Kids of Dune

Franchising was the strategy before the very first movie crashed and burned, with Lynch and star Kyle MacLachlan (playing Paul Atreides) set to shoot both Dune follows up back-to-back in 1986. Mini spaceship designs, outfits, and props from the very first movie were positioned in storage by manufacturer Dino De Laurentiis for usage on these follow-ups, while the director hammered away on a Dune II script. “I composed half a script for the 2nd DuneI actually got into it due to the fact that it wasn’t a huge story,” he states in Lynch on Lynch“more like an area story. It had some actually cool things in it.”

Throughout the 2 years I invested assembling my book A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s Dune– An Oral HistoryI had no luck discovering Lynch’s script for Dune IIin spite of Frank Herbert informing Prevue publication in December 1984 that he had a copy and was recommending Lynch on it. “Now that we speak the exact same ‘language,’ it’s a lot easier for both people to make development, particularly with the movie scripts,” Herbert informed the publication. In July 2023, within the Frank Herbert archives at California State University, Fullerton, I came throughout a slim folder with a sticky note stating “Dune Messiah script modifications,” resolved to the 2nd flooring of VFX guy Barry Nolan’s workplace in Burbank where Lynch monitored the last impacts shoots and modifying on Dune

Inside the folder lay the things of fans’ dreams, never ever revealed previously: 56 pages dated “January 2nd-through-9th, 1984,” matching Lynch’s “half a script” declaration. Total with penned annotations by Herbert, the Dune II script reveals Lynch was still passionate about the product, providing brand-new significance to small information in the ’84 movie. He likewise broke a method to inform the complex story of Herbert’s 1969 unique Dune Messiahquickly the least cinematic book in the series due to its focus on palace intrigue over action, in addition to the inner chaos of a hesitant totalitarian (Paul Atreides) in location of a conventional hero’s journey. It might call of sacrilege to some, however Lynch’s Dune II would have bested Herbert’s book– and been one hell of a motion picture.

While composing this piece I connected to Lynch for remark, given that his Dune II script had actually never ever been gone over in information openly. He mentioned, through an assistant, that he “sort of keeps in mind composing something however does not remember ever completing it.” As Dune is “a failure in his eyes and not a specific time that he likes to consider or discuss,” he nicely decreased to speak with me.

The Lynch touch

“I’m composing the script for Dune II. Dune II is absolutely Dune Messiah, with variations on the style. … Dune Messiah is an extremely brief book, and a great deal of individuals do not like it, however in there are some truly cool concepts. I’m genuine thrilled about that, and I believe it might make an actually excellent movie. It begins 12 years later on, and this produces an entire brand-new set of issues. … It ought to have a various state of mind. … It needs to be 12 weird years later on.”– David Lynch, Starburst # 78 (January 1985)

Of the lots of distinctions in between Dune Messiah in unique kind and David Lynch’s script, the greatest ordinary in the opening pages, which information what takes place in the after-effects of the scene in the very first Dune film when the Harkonnens bombed the Atreides’ fortress in Arrakeen, the capitol of the desert world Arrakis. In the corridor where Duncan Idaho (Richard Jordan) was shot in the head, his protected dead body still drifts on the flooring, humming and triggering.

From out of the shadows emerges a familiar face: the Baron’s Doctor (Leonardo Cimino). Idea to be the only speaking part produced particularly for Dune by Lynch, we discover this Doctor was really Scytale, a shape-shifting “face dancer” vital to the plot of Herbert’s 2nd book. Returning to Dune 84, you might not have actually seen Cimino’s Doctor accompanied Baron Harkonnen throughout the Arrakeen attack. The Doc is missing after that, even as the Baron screams creepily, “Where’s my medical professional?” That’s due to the fact that Doc/Scytale absconded with Duncan’s body. This Easter egg is Lynchian world-building at its finest.

Scytale’s 12-year odyssey reanimating “dead Duncan Idaho” into the ghola called Hayt on the horrible Bene Tleilax world (discussed by Paul in Dunemakes up the whole opening 10 minutes of the script. Lynch calls the world Tleilax “a dark metal world with canals of steaming chemicals and acids.” Those canals, Lynch composes, are lined with “dead pink little test tube animals.” Starting Dune II with a concentrate on Scytale foregrounds him to main villain, unlike Herbert’s book where myriad conspirators work versus Paul.

“Lynch’s preferred set throughout production of Dune was Giedi Prime, with equipment and flesh modifications fitting his creative perceptiveness,” states Mark Bennett, creator of the DuneInfo site, after checking out the discovered script. “For Messiah, Lynch chose that Bene Tleilax might be co-opted for his design, given that it isn’t explained in the book.”

The world itself is run by the Tleilaxu, sadists whose simple language (“Bino-theethwid, axlotl”) signals their unusual nature, offering Kenneth McMillan’s monstrous Baron from the ’84 Dune a run for his cash. Here’s an especially surreal/Lynchian passage, where Scytale sings a haunting “boogie tune”:

Scytale’s buddies are chuckling and hugely rolling marbles under their hands as they view Scytale sing through eighteen mouths in eighteen heads strung together with flesh that resembles a sagging tube. The heads are singing all over the pink space. One guy opens his mouth and a swarm of small individuals stream out singing accompaniment to Scytale. Another male launches a drifting pet which takes off in mid-air triggering everybody to get little and lost in the fibers of the lovely carpet. Little they all continue to laugh, a laughter which is now exceptionally high in pitch. Scytale (now with just one head) crawls up a wall chuckling hysterically.

“The Bene Tleilaxu produce delightfully odd bad guys, right up Lynch’s street,” states Dune scholar Kara Kennedy (Frank Herbert’s Dune: A Critical Companionwho I likewise supplied with a copy of the movie script. “He lets loose with them in his script.”