Excerpt: "MÉTAL HURLANT: 1974 – 1987. RÉVOLUTION OF THE HUMANOÏDES. (PART 4)" (A.Glass 2022)

 "Jodorowsky assembled one of the most creative teams he could muster for the ambitious film project, with the likes of the concept artists such as H. R. Giger and Chris Foss, Giraud created all the character and set designs, with Dan O’Bannon to handle the special effects.    Jodorowsky, in similarity to Giraud, drove the preproduction into a hyper intensified project, remixing Frank Herbet’s DUNE universe within his own take of its conceptional ideas, the 1st draft of the script and story board turned out to be massive, estimated that it could end up being a 4 hour movie.  The extensive array of drawings provided by Giraud was phenomenal, who, by Jodorowsky’s standard had never seen an artist work as quickly and precisely as Giraud.  In 1976, after the extensive amount of post production was put in place, the studio canceled the project due to apparent financial issues,  Jodorowsky’s  DUNE never saw the light of day.

With the DUNE project now shelved,  Giraud, who had already been working on simultaneous projects of his own with Métal Hurlant, was in the throes of burnout.  Jodorowsky, who became depressed after his version of DUNE was canceled, commissioned Giraud to work on two comic projects with him, however, Hollywood has a knack of recycled ideas and more particularly shelved preproduction teams, with UK director Ridely Scott’s space horror ALIEN about to begin production, he morphed Jodorowsky’s DUNE team onto his new project, including Giraud.   H.R. Giger conceived the visual concept for the iconic Alien creature, Giraud designed the space outfits for the doomed crew members, giving their own aesthetics a very humanist, yet also an almost xeno edge.  It was to the credit of the set designs for ALIEN, which came from Jodorowsky’s ex-creative dream team, that ended up defining Ridely Scott’s iconic space horror.  Showcasing their ability to create unique differentials between the human and alien set pieces, whist complementing each other onto an original concept..."

Full article:https://chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/05/metal-hurlant-1974-1987-revolution-of_16.html

(A.Glass 2022)