Director Denis Villeneuve is Dune his Part Two save movie theaters

Whoever cuts the trailers at Netflix deserves a little bonus this week for ending on that particular line.

Oh, they added it since I left my comment? Good on them! Though it really should’ve been on the list to start with.

Wait, what? She’s not just someone who gives 30-second lifehacks on that loop that plays while I’m pumping gas into my vehicle?

THAT’S KEEN I LIKE HER TOO

Jake or Maggie?

Who among us hasn’t taken a job directing a Star War simply because they needed a root canal?

“the use of AI” during the SAG-AFTRA strike in order to “replicate the voices” of actors.

Lawrence of Arabia is 3 hours 42 minutes.

Still more faithful than I, Robot.

Penultimate paragraph: “Fremont director Babak Ja”

My earlier comment wasn’t clear enough, but yes, I meant to say that in terms of faithfulness to Asimov’s writing, Foundation seems comfortably ahead of I, Robot, which just takes the Three Laws, a few character/company names, and maybe a couple of glancing similarities to a couple of Asimov’s robot stories in some…

The Mule doesn’t show up until halfway through book two of the trilogy, so that actually tracks.

The first books definitely show their age, written in the good old patriarchy days. You’ve got white guys traveling around the galaxy in their personal spaceships while the women cook the meals, etc. That’s only a slight exaggeration.

Is it faithful to the original trilogy, or does it bring in material from later books, or is it more, ah, “inspired” by Asimov’s writings? It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read them, but my memory of the Foundation trilogy was that only the parts where the Mule played a major role seemed readily filmable.

Oh, he’ll keep adding complications and subplots and new characters until the last page... when we’re introduced to Tommy Westphall.

Yeah, pretty much. The details might not be exact, but it’s obvious from the way the process was handled that WBD never intended to do anything but bury the movie.

Coyote vs. Acme was actually generating very positive word-of-mouth from its previews, and reportedly WBD got some decent offers when they allowed other distributors to bid on its rights. But apparently since they weren’t offered enough money to make the film immediately profitable, they decided they’d rather just…

A movie studio is spending $200M on a sequel to a movie that made over $1B? Stop the presses, I think we have the scoop of the year.