An aborted project put back on the front of the stage.
Before David Lynch and more recently Denis Villeneuve, another director wanted to appropriate
Dune
, an essential work of science fiction written by Frank Herbert.
Alejandro Jodorowsky obtains in 1974 the rights to adapt it on the big screen.
The Franco-Chilean director puts his ideas on paper.
It composes a real logbook which reproduces dialogues, legends and didascalies in French and English, studies of characters, sets and vehicles.
Estimated between 25,000 and 35,000 euros, this extremely rare storyboard will be auctioned by Christie's in Paris on November 22.
A colossal project
"I didn't want to respect the novel, I wanted to recreate it"
explained Alejandro Jodorowsky in 1985 for the magazine
Métal Hurlant
. The director wanted, in his own way, to pay homage to the world's best-selling science fiction book. He wanted to produce a "space-opera" whose duration oscillated between ten and fifteen hours. Struck by a dream like Paul Atrédeis, Jodorowsky admits that
“once, the Divinity was kind
enough
[to him] to say in a lucid dream:“ Your next film must be
Dune
””.
The last straw was that he had never read the novel.
“I got up at six in the morning and like an alcoholic waiting for the bar to open, I wait for the bookstore to open to buy the book,”
he remembered.
I read it from a train without stopping to eat or drink.
At midnight on the same day, I finished reading.
At midnight one, I called from New York [the producer] Michel Seydoux in Paris
”.
He succeeds in dragging her into this madness.
The volume includes reproductions of the drawings made by Moebius, alias Jean Giraud.
Moebius Productions
With a few copies of the
“ready-to-use”
storyboard
under their arms, both will try to raise the missing $ 5 million for their
Dune to go
into production. The project, pharaonic, was to bring together among others Jean Giraud alias Moebius in the artistic direction, Pink Floyd and Magma in the soundtrack. Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, David Carradine and Alain Delon were in the cast. The director's ambition made the production studios shudder.
"Jodorowsky's personality and his way of presenting the project certainly impressed, even scared the studios,"
Vincent Belloy, a specialist at Christie's in the Books and Manuscripts department
, explains to
Figaro
.
“Jodorowsky is a passionate and fascinating person, but he has few nuances when it comes to presenting his projects.
Announce without tweezers to Warner or Disney wanting 5 million dollars to make a fifteen hour film, without negotiable cut in the script, we can say to ourselves that it looks like a project that cannot be done
”, confides the specialist .
The characters Duncan Idaho and Leto imagined by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Christie's images limited
Ten to twenty other copies of this storyboard would sleep
"in the archives of Michel Seydoux's company, the others were designed to be left in American studios".
Copy number 5 will be offered for sale at Christie's in Paris.
With the enthusiasm aroused during the theatrical release
of Denis Villeneuve's
Dune
, a surge in auction prices is possible, without however being assured.
Vincent Belloy thinks in any case the context very favorable:
“I think that if there is indeed a year to put this storyboard up for auction, it is now.
There is certainly news around the adaptation, but all the lights are green for it to work very well commercially.
"
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