So Dune and Star Wars’ Filmmakers Walk Into a Bar…

At this level, most of us can agree that Denis Villeneuve made the inconceivable potential. He took Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi e-book Dune and made it into common, digestible leisure, a feat nobody thought would ever occur. And but alongside the way in which he had a number of obstacles, together with one from a galaxy far, distant.

“If you think about trying to do your own space opera today, I’m sorry, you are fucked by the huge elephant in the room that is Star Wars,” Villeneuve joked in a brand new piece by the Hollywood Reporter. He’s speaking figuratively in fact, in a number of senses of the phrase, about how Star Wars has turn into so common that any comparable area opera—even ones that got here alongside earlier than Star Wars, equivalent to Dune, John Carter or Flash Gordon—now will eternally be in comparison with Star Wars. And whereas making his Dune, the director discovered himself in a direct competitors with that different franchise.

In the identical THR story, Villeneuve explains that when he and manufacturing designer Patrice Vermette have been scouting places in a helicopter excessive over the Wadi Rum desert of Jordan they noticed a line-up of over a dozen black SUVs driving round. This was the desert the director had dreamed about making Dune in since he was a baby. And but, as a filmmaker, he knew what these SUVs meant: one other location scout.

Vermette remembered that his good friend, Paul Inglis, whom had labored with the Dune pair on Blade Runner 2049, was engaged on the yet-to-be titled ninth Star Wars movie, so he shot him a textual content. “Hey, man, random question. Do you happen to be in Wadi Rum right now?” Vermette stated. Inglis texted again with the unhealthy information. “Yup, was that you who just flew over us?” It was certainly that damned elephant known as Star Wars.

Thankfully, the story has a cheerful ending. A gathering was set between the Dune crew of Villeneuve and Vermette, in addition to Inglis and the Star Wars crew, at a resort bar. “We told them, ‘We don’t want to know anything about your story, but let’s protect both of us and make sure we don’t end up shooting the exact same areas of the desert,’” Vermette stated. “It was all cool.”

And so what’s what occurred when the crew behind Dune and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker walked right into a bar: they compromised about taking pictures in several components of the identical huge, evocative desert. Read far more about Dune’s intersections with Star Wars within the glorious Hollywood Reporter story.

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