Fleming just missed Bondmania, he died before Golfinger was released. I’d bet good money that he would have continued to crank out new Bond novels given the huge demand and interest in Bond post the Goldfiner and Thunderball films. Bond was already popular, but he really never witnessed the full Bond craze once it hit stride. As to what next? Maybe a resurrected SPECTRE, more short stories. Who knows. Except for the beginning, MWTGG was a return to the one-off story formula. I’m sure Fleming would have found new places (India, Australia, new places of Africa, Middle East, Latin America and so on) and new ideas over time.
There are a few pointers Fleming may perhaps have considered to ‘outsource’ Bond. He timidly suggested a team effort to Rex Stout, mentioned it to Len Deighton - then the new kid on the block - and if memory serves even to Raymond Chandler. Granted, Fleming may not have been entirely serious with such. But fact is, as long as he pursued his own writing career he was fascinated by colleagues like Stout and Georges Simenon* who produced a striking body of work with impressive frequency and largely continuous quality. The example of Leslie Charteris’s The Saint will also not have gone unnoticed. It never happened in Fleming’s lifetime, but he surely would have been interested to keep Bond earning money, even if he wouldn’t have had the power to write more Bond books himself.
Anybody with sufficient knowledge of the book will likely be aware that Dune would be a tough sell even in ideal circumstances. I seriously doubt a studio will offer the necessary budget to film this as it should be done, even if we completely ignore the more problematic themes of this story: a religious crusade largely fought by fanatic warriors with suicide and terror attacks; the weaponisation of belief and cult; the destruction of an inhumane and criminal system of oppression by, you guessed it, another inhumane, criminal and oppressive system. If that will not give the top brass cause for alarm the fact that Dune is a modern interpretation of the birth of Islam will surely lead to all kinds of unwelcome parallels with our here and now.
In short, I’d be willing to bet there will not be a Dune film for some time - unless the story is totally distorted and turned into a Star Wars clone.
*When Fleming, shortly before his own death, finally met Simenon, one of his literary heroes, he was astounded to learn - and likely not a little miffed - that Simenon had never read one of his books. They talked at length about writing routine, Simenon’s not being too dissimilar from Fleming’s, but evidently much faster; a book in about 11 day’s, a chapter each day. Fleming seemed surprised to hear Simenon never cared about his books once they were finished, didn’t care about jacket design or translations.
Denis has called his Dune ‘Star Wars for adults’.
Yes, that’s the typical line you’d say to sell the project to a studio since 1977. The Lynch project had even the toys to go with it. But the story itself is really nothing like it; it’s closer to Hamlet and Titus Andronicus. Every attempt to morph this into simple popcorn entertainment will fail bitterly. And doing it faithfully would probably call for LOTR scope and budget. It’s very debatable if such a Dune production could earn its budget back, let alone make a profit.
I don’t see it happen.
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Would say the same of Blade Runner 2049, which of course DID perform like that. Interesting that DV seems to really go for these “tough sell” sort of projects. I’d want to see his version of Dune should it actually get made, but I imagine I’m in a minority in wanting to see a sci-if drama from the mind of David Lynch through the lens of a visually creative director.
I’d argue Blade Runner had just that cult status that attracts studio boss fantasies: there’s a huge awareness of its iconography going beyond the fanbase. Look at Tumblr or Pinterest, people are in love with minimalist unicorn film posters and clips from Hauer’s last scene. People who haven’t even seen the film or cared about PKD. So a hardcore fanbase was there, a wider cultural appeal of the themes of Blade Runner too; the ‘original’ actor was a huge star with b/o power…all in all I can see how they must have been itching to go.
What they didn’t understand was, Blade Runner didn’t need a sequel, the story was told to the logical end. Ridley Scott actually improved on Dick’s story by putting a question at centre which Dick dismissed in a chapter - and then leaving the answer to the audience. Now I haven’t seen the sequel yet, but any Blade Runner ‘revisited’ would be in trouble once it touches that fundamental ambiguity. Like doing INCEPTION II and showing the spinning top again…
A sci-fi drama from the mind of Frank Herbert, you wanted to say.
But as Dustin masterfully laid out the novel is filled with ideas that will make today‘s audiences cringe if you really want to do them justice in an adult way.
And BR 2049 was meant to be an easy sell - but Villeneuve turned it into a hard one which was adult and interesting but overlong and boring for the target audience which can make a movie a hit.
Yes. Credited the director before the writer (odd considering my job)
Well, we’ve been there before: Jodorowsky’s Dune would have been going in Frank Herbert’s direction and - apparently with his blessings - even way beyond, so far the result would in all likelihood have been at least 50 per cent Jodorowsky’s vision. But that would have probably been a work for a fracture of the audience needed. Still, one would have liked to see it on screen…
That would have been a trip.
I´m currently revisiting the DUNE series, going through the first sequel, and I am impressed how politically prescient the story really is - or how well it enlightens the reader about the power plays of different groups grasping for influence, using religion for their personal gains.
I guess DUNE and its sequels would make much more sense as another HBO series.
Possibly. But for me the major hurdle is that there are really only so few characters who invite identification or make us care for them, the crucial element for any tv series. Dune depicts a world so far removed from ours that most of its characters seem derivatives of Nietzsche’s übermensch: genetically altered, rigorously selected, ruthlessly trained in a life-or-death regimen.
There is very little traditional love in the books, few qualities that make us root for the main cast. Paul is quickly transformed from an - already highly trained and exceptional - teenager to a demigod-like seer and leader of a galaxy-wide revolution. His sister is actually the sum of all her female ancestry, incorporating every memory and conscious mind and born as a fully aware being herself. Her mother is one of galaxy’s movers and shakers, betrayed by her own sisterhood and now out for revenge by pointing the wrong end of a messiah at her former society. Oh yes, and they all take drugs that give them visions…
My concern is, there is an enormous scope of visionary power in this tale, but only so few people we could care for after a certain point. That would have to be addressed. And again with every new book in the canon since much of what is revealed later is even tougher…
Death is overrated. These same rumors abounded with DAD. They’re not going to kill the goose and the franchise can’t pass up casting Bond #7 for Bond 26 and missing 2022 for a 60th anniversary release. I still dream and hope they opt to reboot/retool Moonraker. Of course, they can’t call it that, but it’s still damn good stuff that could work.
Agree they probably won’t do death. On the other hand they are in a slight bind as the Craig era has seen our hero go from naive newbie to burnt out to in theory walking off for a new life. Someone else mentioned the obvious conclusion: all around him die, and he’s destined for a lonely life with the secret service. Or perhaps they go all out and use the YOLT ending: amnesia. Regardless, hard to see how they transition from an older Craig to a presumably fresh young face. Just doesn’t really join up and certainly not as seamless as the Connery/Lazenby/Moore/Dalton/Brosnan transitions. So perhaps they treat Craig as a stand-alone series, disregard it for B26, and just revert back to business as normal.
CR became a reboot so they could go back to Bond starting out as a double-0, not because Craig’s casting demanded it otherwise. Moore and Dalton were both wildly different from their predecessors without the need to reboot. They could shift gears again for B26 without necessarily having to re-revise Bond’s character or backstory–just treat continuity the way the used to, which was to ignore it for the most part.
In all fairness, they wouldn’t need a reboot any more than they needed it last time. There have been shifts in tone before and the Craig films would have worked just as good as ‘ordinary’ Bond entries (if we ignore the ill-conceived attempt of the last one to make it all one giant Game-of-Double-0 epic.)
Agreed.
In my mind, all the talk about the absolute need for re-inventing and updating for the times is silly and pointless hysteria.
Instead of reinventing we need films that actually do what already was invented. So many current modern updates just miss the mark and fall flat. The DC universe is just one example for that.
The blockbuster/ franchise landscape has changed dramatically over the last few years. There was a time when the idea of killing off your lead character or ending your series only to hit the reset button a few years later was unheard of. But now? Some franchises are are rebooting faster than others are putting out sequels (once again, looking at you Spider-Man!).
Killing Bond then rebooting the series again for Bond 26 would be a bad idea, but a bad idea consistent with modern Hollywood.
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They did a great job rebooting Bond. Why on earth would they want to do it again so soon. It’ll be a couple of decades before the next real reboot and i predict that it will not involve Bond’s death, or re-gendering the character. It’s been going for 50 years during which there were probably many times in which folk suggested radicle changes, but they resisted and it’s worked out ok.
I think it’s best to continue onwards after Craig without any explanation. If it’s a new continuity it’s something they never outright confirm or deny. The Craig reboot was only really done because they wanted to adapt Casino Royale. Everything that followed was centred around that original decision.
IMO they should not re-boot after B25 simply because they have a great supporting cast that can be used long after Daniel’s departure ( Fiennes, Wishaw and Harris). It would be jarring if they re-booted Bond but kept the MI6 gang. (Like it was with Judi Dench going from DAD to CR, but in triplicate.) And it would be a tremendous waste of talent if they did not return after B25.
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