Sometimes called "the greatest movie that was never made," Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune was the cult director's mid-1970s effort to adapt Frank Herbert's novel for the big screen, starring Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, and Gloria Swanson, with music by Pink Floyd and Magma. During pre-production, Jodorowsky and comic artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud famously collaborated on a massive collection of set and character designs and a nearly complete story board of the entire proposed film—which would have run 14 hours as scripted—including dialogue in English and French. Producer Michel Seydoux and Jodorowsky made a handful of copies of a hardcover tome compiling the drawings and set off to the United States to entice studios to fund the project which, unfortunately, just didn't happen. For the whole story, watch this wonderful documentary.) There are reportedly only ten or so copies of the Dune book that survived. In two weeks, Christie's will auction off one of them. This scarce book—officially titled Michel Seydoux Presents Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune from Frank Herbert's Novel—is expected to fetch EUR 25,000 – EUR 35,000. Click through Moebius Everyday's Instagram post below for a taste.
From Christie's:
This copy is numbered 5 on the reverse of the lower board. Some other copies are known : one was auctioned a couple of years ago, and Jodorowsky owns a copy as well. There are probably a couple others surviving copies.
The book is partially reproduced online. We do not know if the other surviving copies are numbered as well, so it is a bit tricky to evaluate the amount of initially printed copies. We can logically suppose that between 10 and 20 copies were printed and bound.
Sky blue cloth binding, with, pasted on the upper board, a photographic reproduction of the proposed movie poster after an original work by Christopher Foss, printed title piece on the spine, remains of a snap button clasp.
(Thanks, Tim Daly!)
