I've always loved documentaries that go into larger than life projects or directions that never came to be. Among a few that come to mind, Lost In La Mancha, which went into Terry Gilliam's attempts to bring a Don Quixote movie to life with Johnny Depp as a lead, as well as the entire saga of The Thief And The Cobbler, which Disney tried to physically destroy before taking the concept an turning it into Aladdin. Jodorowsky's Dune tells the tale of the larger than life attempt by the visionary director, before financial difficulties stunted the project (The movie would be taken over by David Lynch). Of all the film projects that never came to light, this is one crazy project I would have loved to see completed.
The option was then taken over two years later by director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who proceeded to approach, among others, Peter Gabriel, the prog rock groups Pink Floyd and Magma for some of the music, artists H. R. Giger and Jean Giraud for set and character design, Dan O'Bannon for special effects, and Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson and others for the cast.
Frank Herbert traveled to Europe in 1976 to find that $2 million of the $9.5 million budget had already been spent in pre-production, and that Jodorowsky's script would result in a 14-hour movie ("It was the size of a phonebook", Herbert later recalled). Jodorowsky took creative liberties with the source material, but Herbert said that he and Jodorowsky had an amicable relationship. The project ultimately stalled for financial reasons. The film rights lapsed until 1982, when they were purchased by Italian filmmaker Dino DeLaurentiis, who eventually released the 1984 film Dune, directed by David Lynch.
