Sci Fi Gives Green Light To "Children of Dune"

fooguy writes "Our friends at the Sci Fi Channel have given the Green Light to begin production of Children of Dune. According to the release, 'The miniseries begins production in Prague in April 2002 and is slated to air in 2003. Dune adapter John Harrison wrote the script, based on "Dune Messiah" and "Children of Dune," the second and third novels in Frank Herbert's six-volume Dune Chronicles series. Richard P. Rubinstein comes back on board as executive producer. The sequel will continue the story of the Atreides family and recount the fall of Paul's empire, with the future resting in the hands of Paul's heirs, his twin children."

Very subtle propaganda

[typical geek]

Most knowledgeable science fiction readers are wll aware that the Dune series is really an allegory for Islam, with spice = oil.

I find the timing of this film to be very suspicious. In a nutshell, Dune Messiah deals with corruption in the upper levels of Fremen heirarchy, while Children of Dune deals with how Paul Atreids children sieze control of the Interstellar empire.

If you assume the Bin Laden family = Fremen, and Osama = Leto II, it gets very interesting indeed. I wonder how this will be changed to make the message acceptable for western civilization?

messiah probably cut to 10 minutes

[garyrich]

The book is 90% interior dialog. A lot of it is actually important to the overall Dune world though. I wonder how they will handle that? Probably ignore it. Children of Dune is far more filmable, so I imagine that's where they will spend screen time.

garyr

Re:Very subtle propaganda

[Violet Null]

Not to dispute the whole Fremen == Islam && spice == oil bit, but the whole business with Osama shows an example of how...

1) A sci-fi writer can predict events decades in the future, and weave them into their novels, or...

2) The human mind is capable of finding coincidences in the darnedest places.

Slashdot Gives Green Light to Complain About Dune

[mttlg]

You just know everyone is going to use this for a "The Movie Sucked!" vs. "The miniseries sucked!" flamefest. Let's just hope these people don't organize into rival houses and fight for control of the world's supply of Dune criticism...

(My take on the whole thing as someone who hasn't gotten around to reading the books (which are sitting with the rest of the classic sci-fi books I haven't read yet) is that things in the movie make more sense after watching the miniseries, and that the miniseries has more emotional depth than the movie. And despite its constant darkness, the movie seems rather upbeat, to the point of silly humor at times, not even counting the screwed up ending. I found the miniseries to be much more subtle, and that made it preferable to the movie for me.)

The Movie

[ackthpt]

I read the book, in the week prior to the movie coming out (what, 1985?) and was stunned at how incomprehensible the film was. Ok, it's really an epic tale told in probably 120 min. or so of film and like the recent Harry Potter and the Sorcer's Stone, much was left out or the film would have been 8 hours, if not longer. Sacrifices have to be made, but I'll probably never alot another couple hours of my life to see Dune the movie again.

Now, if anyone is interested in seeing a really fun film, go find Amelie [amelie-themovie.com]. Also, film noir with some chuckles, Novocaine (w/Steve Martin) Both worth seeing a second time. Hopefully LOTR will not disappoint, after all the hype.

Not conjecture at all :

[Gaijin42]

Actually, there are some extensive interviews with Herbert saying that water is oil.

Exceprt from "When I was writing dune" can be found in the front of the paperback copy of Heretics of dune.


...there was no room in my mind for cencerns about the book's sucess of failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before exprienced.

It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.

It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.

It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economincs.

It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.

It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through dependence on such a substance.

Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water iteself, a substance whose supply diminishes each day

It was to be an ecological novel then, with many overtones, as well as a story about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor each of thes elevels at every stage in the book

But the islam stuff doesnt stop there. The Telaxiu are Islamic, as can be seen in the later books.