Cinema is strewn with the ghosts of films unmade — projects that spent years in development, teetering on the brink of being greenlit before disappearing without a trace. And one such project became the stuff of legend: cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel "Dune," a film which gestated in the mid-1970s and came this close to getting made.
Set on a desolate desert planet which produces a mind-altering drug that enables intergalactic travel, "Dune" cried out for an adventurous director to adapt it. David Lynch tried in 1984, and it was a disaster, but could Jodorowsky have done better? Director Frank Pavich tantalizes us with just that possibility in his wonderful documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune," which tells the full story of "The greatest movie never made" (as the tagline puts it).
"Once you are familiar with Alejandro Jodorowsky's movies and then you hear that that guy's next project was going to be 'Dune,' and you learn about the amazing actors he had lined up — Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles — and you hear Pink Floyd was going to do the soundtrack ... You wanna see that movie!" says Pavich, speaking at a post-screening Q&A at the 26th Tokyo International Film Festival