10 Greatest Sci Fi Movies Never Made

Here is a link to the Timesonline about the "10 greatest sci fi movies never made".

It is excerpted from the book, "The Greatest Sci Fi Movies Never Made".


The particularly interesting bit for me was this:

8: Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune

“A lot of people have tried to film Dune. They all failed,” stated the opus’s author, Frank Herbert – after David Lynch’s noble effort reached the screen in 1984. A more promising adaptation was proposed in the mid seventies, with Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky overseeing production designs by H.R. Giger, British artist Chris Foss, and French comic book artist Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud. Among Jodorowsky’s more outlandish ideas was offering the role of Emperor Shaddam IV to Salvador Dali, at a previously unheard-of salary of $100,000 per hour. Perhaps unsurprisingly, financing on the film fizzled. However, the two extant adaptations – Lynch’s, and a successful 2000 miniseries – will be joined, in 2010, by a third, with The Kingdom director Peter Berg at the helm.

This was put together, cast and design work started in the mid 70s. When the Hollywood end of the funding fell over, Giger and Dan O'Bannon (also on the crew) went on to do Alien, and other design work from the project popped up in Star Wars and Blade Runner. Imagine a cinematic world that Star Wars, Blade Runner and Alien were all considered derivative to a maverick European art house version of Dune that pre dated Close Encounters....

And the Dali story, apparently he was going to be paid $100k an hour, for an hours work. The rest of the movie his role of the Baron was going to be played by a plastic robot avatar (very Jodorowsky). Also David Caradine and Orson Welles had been lined up to star.