The history of cinema is full of screenplays left pending, projects proposed to the majors and never realized. Of some of them we know dialogues, plot and nothing else, no images that allow us to imagine how it would have been if it had been released in theaters. One of these is the version directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky of Dune, a science fiction novel written by Frank Herbert and arrived in theaters in September 2021 starring Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet.
Jodorowsky’s transposition is probably the greatest film ever made in the history of cinema, if for no other reason than the cast, which would have included Salvador Dali, Orson Wells, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd, Alain Delon and David Corradine. The film’s storyboard is one of the few tools left to imagine the Chilean director’s project, which was never realized because of the excessive expenses for the film and because of the ten-hour duration planned by Jodorowsky, which was impossible to negotiate with Hollywood production companies.

The rights of the novel had been bought in the 70s by the production company Apajc International, which had planned to entrust the project of the film to David Lean. Producer Michel Seydoux bought the rights in 1974 and Jodorowsky went to live for two months in a castle, writing the script, together with cartoonist Jean Giraud, who in the meantime was transferring the director’s imaginary narrative onto paper.

The spaceships that would have populated the planet Arrakis were instead born from the pencil of the illustrator Chris Foss while to characterize some characters was chosen the Swiss Hans Ruedi Giger.
As Alejandro Jodorowsky’s storyboard is the only real work made by the director on the plot of Dune, it has retained over time an aura of mystery and fascination. Now only ten copies of the Dune storyboard remain and one of them will be auctioned at Christie’s on November 22: estimated sale between 25 and 35 thousand euros.