Yes, there’s even more to David Lynch’s Dune than you first thought – here’s 21 deleted scenes

So I’ll come clean and admit that David Lynch’s Dune is one of my favourite movies. It’s also one of the ones I can quote from the most, but I won’t subject you to that – I think you’d rather endure the Box than that.

As you might expect from such a huge book, it is also a long movie, very long for 1984 when it was released, coming in at 2h11. It could have been even longer, though, but producer Raffaella de Laurentiis had a clear strategy for stopping David Lynch from going too long: “For every day you run over budget, she told Lynch, a page will be ripped from the script. At random.”

Even so, Lynch filmed a lot more Dune than went into his first cut. Much of that extra material then got saved up and restored, complete with additional narration, for an extended Sci-fi channel version – which Lynch asked be credited to someone other than him, as he didn’t approve.

But that still wasn’t all the footage that Lynch filmed. Oh no. There was plenty, plenty more. And for fans of the book, some of those deleted scenes were actually very important moments: everything from Paul marrying Irulan and the death of Thufir Hawat through the funeral of Jamis all the way to the creation of the Water of Life by a baby sand worm.

But life is good. YouTube is kind. And you can watch all 21 additional scenes in the play list below*.

The spice must flow.

* Some of them you can see in the Extended version.

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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