Ridley Scott reveals why he abandoned the adaptation of the book ‘Duna’ (and the person responsible turns out to be the Mexican capital)

Posted: Nov 28, 2021 19:07 GMT

“With my greatest respect for Mexico City, back then it was pretty stinky. I didn’t like it,” the filmmaker confessed.

British director Ridley Scott revealed the reasons why decades ago he refused to collaborate on the project dedicated to the film adaptation of the novel ‘Dune’, written in 1965 by American science fiction author Frank Herbert. In his interview with Games Radar, the filmmaker blamed Mexico City, where the film would be shot.

Eleven years after Herbert’s book came out, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis won the rights to bring the novel to the big screen. Thus, in 1979 hired Ridley Scott as director. However, the filmmaker withdrew from the project and after several negotiations, the direction of the film was assigned to David Lynch.

As part of the promotion of his most recent work, ‘House of Gucci’, Scott confessed that he had withdrawn from filming ‘Duna’ because he was not satisfied with the Churubusco Studies, where I had to work, and with the Mexican capital, usually.

One day, when the script was ready, Scott received a call from Dino De Laurentiis, who told him that filming was too expensive for them, that is why it had been decided that they would do it in Mexico. Despite the great surprise, the director left for the Mexican capital.

“With my greatest respect for Mexico City, back then it was pretty stinky. I did not like. I went to the studio […] where the floor was dirt […] I said, No, Dino, I don’t want to complicate things, “Scott explained.

Frank Herbert’s book has been one of the most difficult works to adapt to the cinema due to its plot and the scenarios in which the film should be set. The film directed by Lynch and launched in 1984 was a total failure, since the initial eight-hour script had been cut to two, making the film almost incomprehensible given the difficulty of following the thread of the plot.

However, in March 2019, the film world decided to once again face the literary world with the new film version of ‘Duna’, released in the fall of this year. The tape is directed by the Canadian director Denis Villeneuve and written by Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts and the director himself.