Quentin Tarantino is not about the spice, and he definitely won’t be investing in a Shai-Hulud popcorn bucket any time soon. “I saw [David Lynch’s original adaptation of] Dune a couple of times,” the director told Bret Easton Ellis on the latter’s self-titled podcast (via Deadline). “I don’t need to see that story again. I don’t need to see spice worms. I don’t need to see a movie that says the word ‘spice’ so dramatically.”
But while the Pulp Fiction director won’t be drinking the water of life any time soon, he does have a rather prescient vision about the dangerous path Hollywood is taking right now. “It’s one after another of this remake, and that remake,” he said. “People ask ‘Have you seen Dune?’ ‘Have you seen ‘Ripley?’ ‘Have you seen ‘Shōgun?’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no.’”
His problem isn’t necessarily with IP movies themselves (although he isn’t too fond of those either), but the fact that we keep doing the same stories over and over and over. “There’s six or seven Ripley books: If you do one again, why are you doing the same one that they’ve done twice already? I’ve seen that story twice before, and I didn’t really like it in either version, so I’m not really interested in seeing it a third time,” he elaborated. “If you did another story, that would be interesting enough to give it a shot anyway.”
That’s a pretty funny thing to say to Bret Easton Ellis right now (no matter how on point it is, at least in this writer’s opinion). Luca Guadagnino just announced that he would be attempting his own version of American Psycho, based—as with the 2000 version—on Ellis’ original novel. Tarantino did say he was against “spice worms,” but he may need one to make a quick escape should he hear the opening notes of “Hip To Be Square” playing in the background sometime in the next few weeks.