You know Dune, that masterpiece Australia is getting nearly a decade after (maybe a little exaggeration) the rest of the world? Well, turns out the screenplay was written in MS-DOS. Holy moly.
Our friends over at Vice Motherboard brought this insane story to our attention on Wednesday. This insane story is that Oscar winning Dune screenwriter Eric Roth banged out the screenplay using the MS-DOS program Movie Master.
That YouTube clip was posted back in 2014. During that interview, Roth revealed he writes everything using the 30-year-old software.
“I work on an old computer program that’s not in existence anymore,” he said. “It’s half superstition and half fear of change.”
Roth wrote the screenplay for Dune in 2018 and told Barstool Sports during a podcast that he was still using Movie Master in 2020.
Microsoft Disk Operating System, MS-DOS for short, is an operating system for x86-based PCs. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, but mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, not the late 2010s.
After some frustrating covid-related delays, Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga Dune launched internationally this month – with the U.S. getting it via HBO Max last week. Originally slated for October 21, Dune’s release date in Australia has been pushed to December 2, 2021. So naturally, and no doubt to the streaming-averse director’s chagrin, online pirates have already gotten there first.
Stagger a release date and expect a different outcome. Also, yay for MS-DOS Dune.