Description

[Frank Herbert, original novel]. Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune. From Frank Herbert's Novel. [No place, possibly Hollywood: circa 1975]. First edition, featuring concept art, designs and storyboards, photographically reproduced, for an unrealized film adaptation of Dune, produced to pitch the project to prospective financiers. Oblong folio (8.125 x 11.5 inches; 209 x 294 mm., with a sheet bulk of 3 inches (78 mm.)). Eleven full-color leaves, nine are costume and spaceship designs by Chris Foss, and probably Moebius (Jean Giraud), and two are by H. R. Giger; one text leaf (title-page, verso blank); and 268 black and white leaves of storyboards and designs for characters, sets and spaceships. Most of the storyboard pages are laid-out with twelve rectangular panels filled with artwork, captions in French and English in image, (many storyboard pages have some blank panels). All pages on thick photography paper, printed on rectos only. Printer's light blue cloth, gilt-lettered blue cloth labels on the front board and spine, snap enclosure to fore-edges (strap with button lacking); red ribbon bookmark. Binding rubbed and thumbsoiled. Front hinge almost entirely broken, as expected with the stress of the thick text-block; rear hinge starting; the first leaf and last few leaves creased. Still, very good, contents very well preserved. Rare. An important artifact from a high-profile unrealized collaborative project, the subject of Jodorowsky's Dune (Sony Pictures Classics, 2013).

Possibly, as many as twenty copies were produced, but we were able to locate just one other online.

The story of Alejandro Jodorowsky's attempt to bring Dune to the screen is now legendary. Jodorowsky (b. 1929) is a Chilean filmmaker known for his avant-garde style. In 1974, Jodorowsky was hired by a French film consortium to adapt and direct Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel, Dune (1965) for the big screen. Jodorowsky threw himself into the project, hiring artists Moebius (Jean Giraud), Chris Foss, and H. R. Giger to design costumes, sets, spaceships, and props; he also hired Dan O'Bannon (this was several years before O'Bannon wrote the screenplay for Ridley Scott's Alien (1979)) to provide special effects. He had also approached Orson Welles to play the villain Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, and tried to get his friend Salvador Dalí to play the mad Emperor Shaddam IV (Dalí's money demands were much too high, and Dalí's madness was a bit too much, so he was dropped from the project). Jodorowsky had also planned to cast his son, Brontis (nine years old at the time) to portray the young Paul Atreides. He had also planned to have Pink Floyd and the French prog-rock band Magma to write the music. Unfortunately, the film was only budgeted at $9.5 million, and Jodorowsky spent $2 million of it on pre-production, which included a fourteen-hour script (Herbert referred to the script as a "phonebook" - possibly referring to this storyboard book.) When no studio or investor could be found to complete the financing, the project collapsed. This thick storyboard book is one of the few surviving artifacts of that doomed but fascinating production.

Full title: Michel Seydoux Presents Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune from Frank Herbert's Novel. Design by Jean Giraud. Machines by Chris Foss. Special Effects by Dan O'Bannon. Dialogue by M. Demuth and A. Jodorowsky.