Its large ensemble cast includes Kyle MacLachlan (in his film debut), Patrick Stewart, Brad Dourif, Dean Stockwell, Virginia Madsen, José Ferrer, Sean Young, Silvana Mangano, Sting, Linda Hunt, and Max von Sydow.

The setting is the distant future, chronicling the conflict between rival noble families as they battle for control of the extremely harsh desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune.

The planet is the only source of the drug melange (spice), which allows prescience and is vital to space travel, making it the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe.

Paul Atreides is the scion and heir of a powerful noble family, whose appointment to the control of Arrakis brings them into conflict with its former overlords, House Harkonnen.

Lady Jessica, the concubine of Duke Leto Atreides, is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit, an exclusive sisterhood with advanced physical and mental abilities.

As part of a centuries-long breeding program to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a mental "superbeing" whom the Bene Gesserit would use to their advantage, Jessica was ordered to bear a daughter but disobeyed and bore a son, Paul Atreides.

Leto dies in a failed attempt to assassinate the Baron using a poison-gas tooth implanted by Yueh in exchange for sparing the lives of Jessica and Paul, killing Piter instead.

As an after-effect of this ritual, Jessica's unborn child, Alia, later emerges from the womb with the full powers of an adult Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother.

Director David Lynch appears in an uncredited cameo as a spice worker, while Danny Corkill is shown in the onscreen credits as Orlop despite his scenes being deleted from the theatrical release.

[8][9] The film rights reverted in 1974, when the option was acquired by a French consortium led by Jean-Paul Gibon, with Alejandro Jodorowsky attached to direct.

[8] Jodorowsky approached contributors including the progressive rock groups Pink Floyd and Magma for some of the music, Dan O'Bannon for the visual effects, and artists H. R. Giger, Jean Giraud, and Chris Foss for set and character design.

[8] De Laurentiis then hired director Ridley Scott in 1979, with Rudy Wurlitzer writing the screenplay and H. R. Giger retained from the Jodorowsky production.

He recalled the pre-production process was slow, and finishing the project would have been even more time-intensive: But after seven months I dropped out of Dune, by then Rudy Wurlitzer had come up with a first-draft script, which I felt was a decent distillation of Frank Herbert's [book].

[8] Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, Lewis Smith, Zach Galligan, Michael Biehn, Kenneth Branagh and Val Kilmer either auditioned or were screen-tested for the role of Paul.

[25] A television version was aired in 1988 in two parts totaling 186 minutes; it replaced Madsen's opening monolog with a much longer description of the setting that used concept art stills.

Many of the props were put into storage after the completion of production in anticipation of future use, MacLachlan had signed for a two-film deal, and Lynch had begun writing a screenplay for the second film.

Several magazines followed the production and published articles praising the film before its release,[31] all part of the advertising and merchandising of Dune, which also included a documentary for television, and items placed in toy stores.

consider to be a more definitive multi-disc edition (available only in Germany) containing three of the four versions—theatrical, TV, and SpiceDiver fan edit—plus supplemental materials (some not available on the Arrow release) and the CD soundtrack.

Roger Ebert gave one star out of four, and wrote: This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time.

Visually unique and teeming with incident, David Lynch's film holds the interest due to its abundant surface attractions, but won't, of its own accord, create the sort of fanaticism which has made Frank Herbert's 1965 novel one of the all-time favorites in its genre."

They also commented on how "Lynch's adaptation covers the entire span of the novel, but simply setting up the various worlds, characters, intrigues, and forces at work requires more than a half-hour of expository screen time."

They did enjoy the cast and said, "Francesca Annis and Jürgen Prochnow make an outstandingly attractive royal couple, Siân Phillips has some mesmerizing moments as a powerful witch, Brad Dourif is effectively loony, and best of all is Kenneth McMillan, whose face is covered with grotesque growths and who floats around like the Blue Meanie come to life.

[...] The actors seem hypnotized by the spell Lynch has woven around them—especially the lustrous Francesca Annis, as Paul's mother, who whispers her lines with the urgency of erotic revelation.

In those moments when Annis is onscreen, Dune finds the emotional center that has eluded it in its parade of rococo decor and austere special effects.

Snyder stated that Lynch's "surreal style" created "a world that felt utterly alien [full of] bizarre dream sequences, rife with images of unborn fetuses and shimmering energies, and unsettling scenery like the industrial hell of the Harkonnen homeworld, [making] the fil[m] actually closer to Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) than [George] Lucas.

[5] Colin Greenland reviewed Dune for Imagine magazine, and stated, "Anthony Masters's magnificent design features none of the gleaming chrome and sterile plastic we expect of space opera: instead, sinister paraphernalia of cast iron and coiled brass, corridors of dark wood and marble, and the sand, the endless sand..."[49] Science-fiction historian John Clute argued that though Lynch's Dune "spared nothing to achieve its striking visual effects", the film adaptation "unfortunately—perhaps inevitably—reduced Herbert's dense text to a melodrama".

The site's critical consensus reads, "This truncated adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi masterwork is too dry to work as grand entertainment, but David Lynch's flair for the surreal gives it some spice.

[54]In the introduction for his 1985 short story collection Eye, author Frank Herbert discussed the film's reception and his participation in the production, complimented Lynch, and listed scenes that were shot but left out of the released version.

Styled after Lynch's film, the collection includes figures of Paul Atreides, Baron Harkonnen, Feyd-Rautha, Glossu Rabban, Stilgar, and a Sardaukar warrior, plus a poseable sandworm, several vehicles, weapons, and a set of View-Master stereoscope reels.

[69][70] Its successor, Westwood Studios's Dune II (1992), is generally credited for popularizing and setting the template for the real-time strategy genre of PC games.