Although Alejandro Jodorowsky's version of Dune never made it into theaters, the movie's concept art from still managed to make a splash. The director of documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, which traces the story behind the movie, explains to us just how that happened.
Jodorowsky's Dune director Frank Pavich and composer Kurt Stenzel both joined us today for a Q&A, where Pavich sketched out for us just how the look of the art originally-produced for Dune, and the artists, went on to influence the unique look of both Alien and Blade Runner:
How much do you think the boards and concepts for this movie influenced the genre of science fiction, overall?
Quite a bit actually. The most obvious is ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER. Jodo's team went on to make ALIEN and it was Dan O'Bannon who met Giger on DUNE and suggested him to Ridley Scott. And where would we be today without ALIEN? And the whole franchise? Where would Fincher or Cameron have gotten their start, not to mention the countless films that were directly influenced by the aesthetics of ALIEN.
And BLADE RUNNER's look is based on a comic book by Moebius & Dan O'Bannon called THE LONG TOMORROW. Again, no DUNE = no look for B.R., and where does that leave us all?
Of course we go into some of this in the documentary as it's quite fascinating.
Image: HR Giger with Dune paintings