Dune by Frank Herbert has long been in my top five books of all time.  I read it when I was fourteen and it blew my mind.  I still read it with a sense of wonder, even now.

Kevin J. Anderson, who co-writes in the Dune universe with Frank Herbert’s son, Brian Herbert, recently posted a news release on his blog from Legendary, a film production company that includes in its credits movies such as Interstellar, Jurassic World, Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, and 300.  The news release indicates that Legendary have acquired the rights to the novel Dune.

Dune has often been quoted as Science Fiction’s version of Lord of the Rings.  I hope that the same fate awaits Dune.  There were several horrible adaptations of Lord of the Rings before Peter Jackson got hold of it and did something intelligent with it.

There have been several quite dreadful attempts at filming Dune, too.  The most famous version to date is the 1984 film by David Lynch.  Many people liked that version.  I hated it.  It strayed too far from the quiet weirdness of the book.  A lot of the conflict happens inside characters in the book.  So does a lot of action.  Getting that on film is a challenge and I think Lynch missed the bar.

With the CGI special effects available to film makers in this decade, and some of the intelligent story telling that film makers are returning to, I have high hopes that Legendary’s attempt (a) makes it to the screen and (b) fulfills the promise of the book.

We’ll see.