Kyle MacLachlan wishes Dune would adopt the “Game of Thrones model”

Kyle MacLachlan starred in David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune. Does he think the new version can succeed, or is there another way altogether?

Frank Herbert’s Dune is famously dense book. A few people have tried their hand at adapting it to film over the years, and it’s never quite worked. Director Alejandro Jodorowsky tried and failed in the 1970s, eventually deeming the task “impossible.” David Lynch took a swing in the ’80s, casting frequent collaborator Kyle MacLachlan in the lead role of Paul Atreides, but that has a mixed reputation at best. Speaking to IndieWire, MacLachlan considers it a “flawed gem,” which is nicer than what Lynch has to say about it.

Now, Arrival director Denis Villeneuve is mounting a new version with Timothée Chalamet as Paul. MacLachlan is “curious” about how that’ll go, although he has his reservations. “As a story, and trying to recreate that story, it’s almost impossible,” he said. “It’s incredibly dense, and a little bit like a house of cards. If you leave out one element of the story or another, the structure tends to wobble, and you don’t get the full effect.”

Villeneuve is giving the story a little more time to breathe: his first Dune movie is (hopefully) coming out this December, but it’s only adapting the first half of Herbert’s book; there’ll be a Part 2 coming along later. But MacLachlan doesn’t know if even that’s enough. “I would lobby for three or more films, because it has that kind of potential to really open up. In my imagination, I always thought it would be great to approach it like a ‘Game of Thrones’ model, where you have seasons, or at least a 10-part series, or a 12-part series. You could really go from beginning to end.”

Dune probably could benefit from the Game of Thrones treatment, with episodes that really dug into the epic drama surrounding the Atreides family’s stewardship of the desert planet of Arrakis, aka Dune. There’s just a lot to this story. You have the Atreides family dynamics; the threat from their archenemies the Harkonnen; the galactic-level political plotting by the Padishah Emperor; the sisterhood of nigh-psychic priests the Bene Gesserit; the culture of the native people of Dune, the Fremen…it’s a lot for one movie, or even two.

And even if a director gets the intricate plot under control, there are other tricky aspects to the story, as MacLachlan points out:

"There’s a mysticism about it that is difficult to capture on film. That, combined with a straight-ahead story, and characters that are really well-created. They’re full people, and you want to spend time with each one of them. And that eats up your film time. It’s a real puzzle. It’s just so many elements that you have to bring together. I remember that when I first started reading the book back in the day, I would get to about page 50 or 60 and then have to return back to the very beginning just to put all the players in place. There are so many relationships that are important to understand and know. To hold the stories of each of those so the audience can remember, it’s just almost impossible."

If anybody can pull all of this off, it’s Villeneuve; he has a meticulous eye for detail and love of sci-fi that seems perfectly suited to the material, but it’s still an uphill battle.

We’ll find out if he succeeds when Dune (which doesn’t feature a cameo from MacLachlan, by the way) lands in theaters on December 18. Meanwhile, you can see MacLachlan in the biopic Tesla, where he plays the famous scientist’s longtime rival Thomas Edison. That opens in select theaters and becomes available on demand on August 21.

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