“I DO NOT SEE ANYTHING HERE TO BRING THE CROWDS AT THE BOX OFFICE. PERHAPS THE AUTHOR IS BEING A BIT TOO CLEVER!”
 
Elstree’s Studios’ damning original reader’s report for Frank Herbert’s Dune.
4pp. Typed on rectos only. Reader’s delivery stamp to first page dated 11th August 1966. In very good, clean condition.
 
Elstree Studios’ original reader’s report for Frank Herbert’s Dune, produced just after its UK publication, and completely rejecting its suitability both as a novel and as a potential adaptation.
 
Dune, written by Frank Herbert, was first published in 1965. The reader's report for Elstree notes that the script was submitted as a "published book" on 4th August 1966, with the report completed on the 11th of August.
 
Frank Jackson, a long-term reader for ABPC provides a detailed synopsis & comment on the story on typewritten pages, and his response is one of total rejection for both the novel's quality and its potential adaptation qualities:
"This book is written in such a feverish style that I found it very difficult to follow and harder still to winkle out a central story line of any coherence."
 
"One thing that does become clear, however, is that the distant future, for all its technological marvels, is going to be just as barbarous and unpleasant as the world of today. What a pity!"
 
"I cannot really recommend the subject for consideration as film material. Despite all its wealth of detail, it somehow never grips the attention and the basic pattern of hand-to-hand fights and struggles for dynastic power are so repetitious as to become dull. I do not see anything here to bring the crowds in at the Box Office. Perhaps the author is being just a bit too clever!"
 
The novel Dune would go on to become the best-selling science fiction novel of all time, winning both the inaugural Nebula award and the Hugo award in 1966. Arthur C. Clarke described Dune as "unique" and wrote, "I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings." Robert A. Heinlein described the novel as "powerful, convincing, and most ingenious." It was described as "one of the monuments of modern science fiction" by the Chicago Tribune, and P. Schuyler Miller called Dune "one of the landmarks of modern science fiction... an amazing feat of creation." It is safe to say that the author's attempt to be "too clever" paid off despite the Elstree reader's assessment.
 
Dune was a legendary work for its difficulty to adapt with a failed project by Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1970s, cancelled due to a ballooning budget. It was first successfully released by David Lynch in 1984 to negative reviews, but has since developed a strong cult following. A second film adaptation was released in 2021 to rave reviews and Oscar wins, with Timothée Chalamet as the lead. A sequel, Dune: Part Two, was released on March 1, 2024, covering the novel's second half, and another sequel, Dune: Part Three, based on Herbert's 1969 novel Dune Messiah, is scheduled to be released on December 18, 2026.
 
Film production companies have been basing themselves at Elstree since 1914, and in most cases, their archives have been dispersed, lost or destroyed. This unique and hitherto unknown document from surviving ABPC reader reports has not been seen since its composition seventy years ago and has never before been offered for sale.