To date, Frank Herbert’s game-changing sci-fi masterpiece Dune has had three adaptations. The currently in theaters version by Denis Villeneuve, the 2000 Sci-Fi channel (now SYFY) mini-series, and the 1984 David Lynch cult film. But in the early ’70s, before Star Wars made epic space opera mainstream, French/Chilean auteur (and problematic person) Alejandro Jodorowsky nearly did it first. He envisioned a 14 hour epic version of Dune with painter Salvador Dali as the Emperor, Orson Welles as the Baron Harkonnen, and a score by Pink Floyd. And now an book of concept art by Jean “Moebius” Giraud is up for auction.
Via Boing Boing, we learned that the Holy Grail of Jodorowsky’s unproduced Dune has resurfaced and will soon be up for auction. During Dune’s pre-production, iconic French comic artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud created an immense collection of set and character designs and an almost totally finished storyboard of the entire film. Jodorowsky and the film’s producers made only a few copies of his hardcover collection. They sent those off to Hollywood in hopes the art would convince a studio to greenlight the project. Which, of course, never happened.
But a handful of these books still exist. In a few weeks, Christie’s will auction off one of these extremely rare books (the producers made only 10). They officially titled this massive “phonebook of art” Michel Seydoux Presents Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune from Frank Herbert’s Novel. Christie’s expects the collection with Moebius’ work to sell for EUR 25,000 – EUR 35,000.
If you’ve ever seen the fantastic documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, you’ve seen glimpses of some of the jaw-dropping art from Moebius. But sadly, this version of Dune never came to fruition. Nevertheless, the artwork by Moebius created for this project inspired every big-budget cinematic sci-fi epic for the next several decades. It’s perhaps the most influential film that never got made. The auction goes live at Christie’s on November 22. In the meantime, click on the official page for this auction to get a peek inside this enormous tome.