Motherboard: “SpiceDAO Roasted for Spending $3.8 Million on Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’ Book”

For months now, members of the SpiceDAO—a decentralized autonomous organization dedicated to buying and developing projects based on Jodorowsky’s vision—have been ecstatic about the possibility of buying the pitchbook and finally bringing Jodorowsky’s unfulfilled vision to the public. Jodorowsky, who directed surrealist films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain, was at one time slated to direct the film adaptation of Dune, but the wildly over-budget project died and the creative work allegedly went on to inspire sci-fi film for decades to come. Jodorowsky’s struggles making Dune were rehashed in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune.

Over the weekend, SpiceDAO reminded the internet that it won the auction in November and had plans to make the book public (to the extent permitted by law) as well as create an original animated limited series inspired by the book to sell to a streaming service and derivative projects from the community. It was quickly and widely ridiculed.

One such derivative project proposed on January 14th featured burning the book to enhance the value of NFTs made from images of its pages. In the group’s forum and DAO, this particular proposal has become a lightning rod for a host of arguments over whether this (and the rest of the project) are legal considering SpiceDAO doesn’t actually own the rights to the contents of the book, just the physical copy.

Edward Ongweso Jr

The initiatives arising from Bitcoin mania are becoming increasingly bizarre and dumb. It’s almost fascinating to watch this level of idiocy unfold – if not for its gigantic carbon footprint. ‘Jodorowsky’s Bible’ is in fact available online for a couple of years, so I’m not sure burning their copy would increase the value of digital scans – it will likely increase the value of the remaining physical copies though.

H.R. Giger 1976 A. Jodorowsky’s DUNE IV | Acrylic on paper, 70 x 100cm

With this sudden burst of interest, I have flicked though the online scans out of curiosity. The quality is all over the place, with some sketches exquisite and impressive – in fact H.R. Giger’s work was used as covers for a Romanian Dune edition some 15 years ago – while others I struggle to place in the Dune universe, or are so far off from descriptions in the book as to become unrecognizable (look for a gnome Gurney Halleck). I highly doubt a work based on these outlandish drawings will bear any resemblance to Dune if it ever gets made.