The Dune Bible, considered one of the holy grails of unmade movie proposals, will hit the auction block at Christie’s just three years after another copy sold in an infamous auction to SpiceDAO for $3 million.
Remember DAOs?
An acronym for decentralized anonymous organization, the crypto-forward groups made waves during the peak of the NFT bubble for crowdfunding splashy projects such as ConstitutionDAO, which raised $47 million in ETH to purchase an original copy of the constitution in November 2021 — only to lose out to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who won the document for a record $43.2 million.
Another group, called SpiceDAO, had more success, at least at first. Its target was Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1975 film adaptation of “Dune,” which, despite attracting the likes of Pink Floyd to commit to the soundtrack and Salvador Dalí, Mick Jagger and Orson Welles all attached as stars, the director was unable to convince any movie studios to finance the film. It reportedly required a $5 million budget and was envisioned to be as long as 15 hours.
It would become known as the "greatest movie that was never made.”
What remained were between 10 and 20 copies of the manuscript, known as “The Dune Bible.” But over time, they faded from public eyes, despite achieving legendary status among filmmakers.
A copy would eventually appear for sale at Christie’s in November 2021, and SpiceDAO swooped in, paying $3 million with plans to issue NFTs of the book before lighting it on fire after it was digitized and made available to the public.
SpiceDAO also had plans to produce a series for a streaming service.
But there was one problem: The group believed it owned the intellectual property if it purchased the book.
According to The Art Newspaper, the IP was actually held by Herbert Limited Partnership. Plans quickly fell apart, with the organization changing its structure multiple times, most recently pinning hopes on an NFT collaboration with comic artist Frank Miller.
“The leader of the project, a user named Kortelin, indicated that the book has no willing buyers,’” Esquire reported at the time.
SpiceDAO was eventually forced to take a massive loss on the book, selling it for just $90,625 in August 2023.
The group’s co-founder, Soban Saqib, told Esquire he “really wish this worked out better.”
The copy up for bid at Christie’s is not the same copy, the auction house confirmed to cllct Wednesday morning. This time around, it carries a pre-sale estimate of $315,000 to $445,000.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.