Editing Dune (1984 film) (section)

===De Laurentiis's first attempt===
In late 1976, Italian producer [[Dino De Laurentiis]] purchased the rights for ''Dune'' from Gibon's consortium.<ref name="nytimes production"/> De Laurentiis commissioned Herbert to write a new screenplay in 1978; the script Herbert turned in was 175 pages long, the equivalent of nearly three hours of screen time.<ref name="nytimes production"/> De Laurentiis then hired director [[Ridley Scott]] in 1979, with [[Rudy Wurlitzer]] writing the screenplay and H. R. Giger retained from the Jodorowsky production.<ref name="nytimes production"/> Scott intended to split the book into two movies. He worked on three drafts of the script, using ''[[The Battle of Algiers]]'' (1966) as a point of reference, before moving on to direct another science-fiction film, ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982). He recalled the pre-production process was slow, and finishing the project would have been even more time-intensive:

{{blockquote|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]. But I also realized ''Dune'' was going to take a lot more work—at least two and a half years' worth. And I didn't have the heart to attack that because my [older] brother Frank unexpectedly died of cancer while I was prepping the De Laurentiis picture. Frankly, that freaked me out. So, I went to Dino and told him the ''Dune'' script was his.
:—From ''Ridley Scott: The Making of His Movies'' by Paul M. Sammon<ref name="BookToScreenTimeline" />}}