Dune: Part Two, starring Timothée Chalamet as the deposed son of space nobility Paul Atreides, is heading into theaters March 1. Prepare for sandworms, prepare for movie stars, prepare for prescient visions of a horrifying future that may be too late to avoid.
As it happens, just over a week before Dune: Part Two drops, director David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune is being rereleased into theaters. The new Dune movies adapt Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi classic across the space of two films. The David Lynch version covers it all in one.
Dune 1984 is being rereleased by Fathom Events. It'll be in theaters for two days only: Sunday, February 18 and Monday, February 19. You can get tickets here. It doesn't say exactly how many theaters the movie is being released into, but I tooled around on the website a bit and found it playing all over, including in and around my home city of Chicago as well as in smaller cities like Little Rock, AR and Dubuque, IA. So if you're interested in seeing this, you have a good chance of finding a screening near you.
And there are reasons to be interested in this. Lynch's Dune movie was a box office bomb upon its release, but it's gained a cult following in the years since, in part because of how bugnuts weird it is. My mind goes to Sting, who plays Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, giving the camera a creepy glare after being released from some kind of rejuvenation chamber, wearing nothing by a sci-fi speedo:
In the new movie, Feyd-Rautha is played by Austin Butler, for the record. Don't expect a recreation of this scene.
David Lynch, the guy behind movies like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, as well as hugely influential TV shows like Twin Peaks, has disowned the movie. He's said he loves everyone he got to work with in making it — Kyle MacLachlan, who played Paul Atreides, would go on to work with him in several projects — but he didn't have final cut over the movie and didn't like the way the final product turned out. "I was so depressed and sickened by it, you know?" he said. "he thing was a horrible sadness and failure to me."
What about the movie hurt Lynch so? Find out in February. And obviously this whole release serves as great marketing for the new film. This winter is all about sand, spend some time baking in the merciless sun of Arrakis.
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