Director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 was a surprisingly faithful sequel to Ridley Scott’s original film, echoing its iconic style with new ideas and advancements that still felt honest to core of the original. For his upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, though, Villeneuve’s has no interest in paying homage to someone else’s style—specifically that of David Lynch, who made an adaptation of his own in 1984.
Speaking with Yahoo! Movies on Facebook (via IndieWire), Villeneuve explained that he has “massive respect” for David Lynch and that he was impressed by Lynch’s Dune and its “very strong qualities,” but it’s not the adaptation he has “dreamed of.” So, rather than acknowledge the other film at all, he’s going to go “back to the book” and resurrect the images that he created in his head when he first read it. Basically, it sounds like Villeneuve is politely saying that he wasn’t crazy about Lynch’s movie—which is hardly a controversial stance—and he’s going to make something that’s both more faithful to the book and more faithful to his own imagination.