Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Why was the 1984 feature film DUNE a box office flop and panned by critics? Perhaps because writer-director David Lynch's original creative vision for the film was nixed by the studio and producers due to budget restraints.
The 466 full-size storyboards in this book reveal Lynch's original vision for the film drawn by talented storyboard artists during pre-production in 1983. If these special effects sequences had been realized the resulting film based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 best-selling novel might have been a true classic rather than a cult classic.
The stunning storyboard images include:
Rampaging Worms – Paul's Hallucinogenic Dream – Atreides Spaceships – Guild Heighliner – Harkonnen Ornithopters – Spaceships Docking – Spice Harvesters – Sardaukar Warriors – Shield Wall – Canyon Sandstorms – Fremen Troops – Jessica, Feyd, Baron, Emperor, Duke, Alia, Reverend Mother – Castle Caladan – Arrakis – Cockpit Dialogue – Action Sequences – Terrific Explosions – Winged Angels – Navigator Fetus – Hordes of Soldiers – Camera directions and notes from storyboard artists to director David Lynch - Planets, Moons and lots of Dunes
In 2019 David Lynch said this about the film: "Dune is a huge gigantic sadness in my life... I did not have final cut on that film. Total creative control, I didn’t have it. The film is not the film I would’ve made had I had that final control."
These storyboards provide a glimpse into the movie he wanted to make.
I have been an avid collector of Dune movie memorabilia for nearly 40 years. This collection of storyboards has been scanned from my personal archives and is dedicated to Dune fans and storyboard art lovers to enjoy.
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The store's inventory of nearly 1000 volumes is currently in the process of being reconstructed after its relocation from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz, Carter, and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
"She thinks I'm a fascist? I don't control the railways or the flow of commerce!" —Margot Robbie as Barbie in Barbie (2023)
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, and The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. He is currently launching a Dallas extension of his MZS Film Series at the historic Texas Theater.
Judith is quoted as saying "his hobbies include exotic dancing, moonwalking, and affixing masking tape labels to every food item in the refrigerator, including eggs. Oh and he has the attention span of a gnat." MZS agreed to it all except the moonwalking.