Why Kevin Costner's Dune Audition Failed

By now everyone knows there are many things wrong with “Dune” 1984. The film has lived in particular fame since David Lynch and Universal Pictures unveiled it to the world, when the $40 million sci-fi epic bombed at the box office and elicited nothing but critical scorn. However, there are those who claim this “Dune” is much better than its reputation suggestsand Denis Villeneuve's recent big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel has sparked much 1984 Dune revisionism.

However, one of the most interesting things about Lynch's failed film isn't necessarily how critics and audiences overlooked its many charms in 1984, but rather how many “what ifs” surround the project. The number of directors lined up to make this film, for example, was frankly dizzying, with everyone from Ridley Scott to David Lean circling the project. After Lynch was finally confirmed as director, he spent six months working on the script with co-writers Eric Bergren and Christopher De Voor, only to abandon much of what the trio had created to rewrite the film a full five times.

What would “Dune” have been like if Ridley Scott had been at the helm? How much less “lynch” would it be if its director kept Bergen and De Vore's input? Perhaps even more intriguing is the question of how the film would have fared had Lynch chosen some of the many actors who were once considered for the film and have since become major stars, including a young Kevin Costner, who likely would have had a lot of a different career if he had been cast in the lead role.

There are several tantalizing questions regarding the 1984 selection of the film “Kāpa”. David Lynch turned down Glenn Close for Dune handing over the role of Lady Jessica to Francesca Annis (who did an excellent job). early, Lynch had also cast Val Kilmer as Paul Atreides before Kyle MacLachlan auditioned and impressed the director so much that he immediately cast him in the lead role.

Before McLachlan was cast, Kilmer wasn't the only choice for Paul that Lynch had in mind. Max Evry's book “A Masterpiece in a Mess: David Lynch's Dune – An Oral History” (using Mashable), the cast and crew recall what an exhaustive casting process was, with several actors being considered. Production office assistant Craig Campobasso revealed that alongside Michael Biehn, Lewis Smith and Kilmer, young Kevin Costner was auditioned for the role of Paul Atreides. However, according to the assistant, several of these actors, including Costner, simply could not fulfill their roles.

“Michael Biehn didn't fit it,” Campobaso said, “Kevin Costner didn't. It's not that they were bad actors; they just didn't meet the Paul-Mud Dibb criteria, because you're looking for that inner strength.” He gave a special shout-out to Costner: “Kevin Costner was unknown at the time, and I remember him being nervous because I was helping him get into the Paul-Mud Dibb costume, and I could feel his nervousness about it.”

Although Kyle McLachlan landed the lead role in David Lynch's The Dune, it turned out to be a double-edged sword. After the film bombed and was panned by critics, the actor revealed that he's a bit of a pariah in Hollywood, telling Los Angeles Times he felt his career was “like a ship, you could feel it going down”. McLachlan had to wait for Lynch to rescue him from post-Dune obscurity by casting him in Blue Velvet. In that sense, both Kevin Costner and Val Kilmer were probably lucky in this particular case, because there's no guarantee that Lynch would have done the same for them.

In Costner's case, he would give what turned out to be his breakout performance just one year after his “Dune” debut, playing a cowboy named Jake in 1985's “Silverado,” the film that began. Costner's lifelong love affair with Westerns and part of the reason he continues to make them today. He then followed it up with his first starring role in 1987's The Untouchables, while cementing his status as one of Hollywood's brightest young stars. That's probably a lot more than he could have hoped for if he'd been in Lynch's failed sci-fi show, though there's a chance Costner wouldn't have struggled the way McLachlan did. Heck, he might even have had something unique to “Dune” that would have lessened the critical backlash. But given the sheer scale of this disaster of a movie, probably not.