One of my rainy day hobbies is to go through all kinds of behind-the-scenes information of films and discover the various projections that never left development hell. The films that were pitched, maybe scripted, maybe even partially shot, but for whatever reason, never ending up completed.

You guys have any favorite films that never were? Because I got a hundred of them. :)



Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune

What was it with Dune attracting all the more bizarre and avante-garde directors? The 1984 film was ultimately directed by David Lynch, the man behind mindfuck films like Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. But before Lynch entered the picture, the film adaptation of Frank Herbet's epic 1965 science fiction novel was optioned to Chilean surrealist direcoter Alejandro Jodorowsky.

If you haven't seen a Jodorowsky film, do yourself a favor and Netflix El Topo or The Holy Mountain. If you're reaction isn't "WTF?" then congratulations, you have just entered the first stage of avante-garde appriciation. To say the least, Jodorowsky is not your typical Hollywood director, and when given the task of adapting Dune to the screen, he went nuts. He requested surrealist artist Salvador Dali (the melting clocks guy) to play Shaddam Corrino, and cast Orson Welles as The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. He got a bunch of science fiction artists from around the world to assist in production design, including H.R. Giger, the man who would eventually design the titular character in Alien.

Reports say that Jodorowsky's script was the size of a phone book, and would have resulted in a 14-hour movie. Having already spent two million of pre-production alone, the studios deems the project unfilmable and pulled out. I personally would have loved to have seen the finished film. Based on things Jodorowsky has written about the film, there would have been a much stronger emphasis on the mystical and the theological then we saw in Lynch's adaption (which I really like, for the record). But Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune is sadly a film that never was.