By now, everyone knows there are many things wrong with Dune 1984. The film has lived in a special kind of infamy since David Lynch and Universal Pictures released it to the world, when the $40 million sci-fi epic bombed at the box office and courted nothing but critical scorn. However, there are those who claim that The Dune is much better than its reputation suggestsand Denis Villeneuve's recent big-screen treatment of Frank Herbert's novel has led to much revisionism in 1984's Dune.

One of the most interesting things about Lynch's ill-fated film, however, is not necessarily how critics and audiences overlooked its many charms in 1984, but how many "what-ifs" surrounded the project. The number of directors lined up to make this film was, for one, frankly dizzying, with everyone from Ridley Scott to David Lean circling the project. Then, after Lynch was finally confirmed as director, he spent six months working on the script with co-writers Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, only to scrap much of what the trio had created to rewrite the film five times. .

What would "The Dune" be like if Ridley Scott was at the helm? How much less "Lynchian" would it have been if its director had preserved the contributions of Bergen and De Vore? Perhaps even more intriguing is the question of how the film would have fared if Lynch had cast some of the many actors who were once considered for the film and have since gone on to become big stars—including a young Kevin Costner, who likely would have had a very different career if cast. the main role.

There are some tantalizing what-ifs when it comes to the casting of Dinah 1984. For example, David Lynch denies Glenn Close involvement in Dune handing over the role of Lady Jessica to Francesca Annis (who did an outstanding job). early, Lynch was also set to cast Val Kilmer as Paul Atreides before Kyle McLachlan auditioned and impressed the director so much that he immediately cast him in the lead role instead.

Before McLachlan was cast, Kilmer wasn't the only choice for Paul that Lynch had in mind. In Max Evry's book "A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune - An Oral History" (via Mashable), the cast and crew recall what was an exhaustive casting process in which multiple actors were considered for the lead role. Production office assistant Craig Campobasso revealed that alongside Michael Biehn, Louis Smith and Kilmer, a young Kevin Costner screen tested for the role of Paul Atreides. According to the assistant, however, several of these actors, including Costner, just couldn't quite do it justice.

“Michael Biehn didn't live up to it,” Campobasso said, “Kevin Costner didn't. inner strength”. He called out Costner in particular: “Kevin Costner was not famous at the time and I remember he was nervous because I helped him get into the Paul-Muad'Dib costume and I could feel his nervousness about it. "

Although Kyle McLachlan landed the lead role in David Lynch's Dune, it turned out to be a double-edged sword. After the film bombed and was panned by critics, the actor found himself 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-Dine obscurity by casting him in Blue Velvet. In that sense, both Kevin Costner and Val Kilmer were probably lucky in this particular instance, 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 breakthrough performance just a year after Dune's debut, playing a cowboy named Jake in 1985's Silverado — the film that started Costner's lifelong love affair with Westerns and part of the reason he continues to make them today. He then followed that up with his first starring role in 1987's The Untouchables, securing his position as one of Hollywood's brightest young stars in the process. That's probably a lot more than he could have hoped for had he been leading Lynch's ill-fated sci-fi spectacle - although there's a chance Costner didn't struggle in the same way McLachlan did. Heck, they might have brought him something unique about "Dine" that would have softened the critical response. But given the sheer disaster of that movie, probably not.