Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2021

The Contenders:

CODA (winner)
Drive My Car
Dune
The Lost Daughter
The Power of the Dog

Spice World?

Films: Dune (2021)
Format: AMC Theater, DeKalb.

I feel like I need to talk about my connection and relationship with the world and empire building of the various iterations of Frank Herbert’s Dune before I talk about the Denis Villeneuve Dune that is current in theaters. I have what I think is a unique history with this property. Back in 1998, I was working freelance for Prima Publishing, writing computer and video game strategy guides. One of the first ones I did was for Dune 2000, a reboot of Westwood Studios’ Dune 2. I worked with Westwood a lot, and also did the book for Emperor: Battle for Dune a few years later. When the estate of Frank Herbert started to run out of money (clearly no longer a problem), they started suing people—including Westwood—for changes to the Dune universe that they had previously approved. I was deposed for that case, which never went anywhere.

Those games were connected visually to the David Lynch version of Dune, and because of that, I have particular notions of what Dune should look like. I spent a lot of time running around Arrakis, after all, so my idea of what an ornithopter or a spice harvester looks like is fairly set.