Ultimately, Spice DAO has made a very expensive mistake-one exemplifying how some crypto bros with millions to burn don’t even know what they’re buying. Spice DAO also intended to make the book public, which is a noble aim-or it would be, if the book wasn’t already free and available on Steve Jobs’ Internet. Buying Jodorowsky’s Dune doesn’t confer the copyright needed to produce Jodorowsky’s vision it only confers one very old, very expensive book. When Spice DAO crowed about their purchase on Twitter, the Internet was quick to set them straight. (Seems like these crypto bros have had too much spice, doesn’t it?) Spice DAO stated that its goal was “to issue a collection of NFTs that are technically innovative and culturally disruptive.” Burning the book would be “an incredible marketing stunt which could be recorded on video” the video itself would then be sold as an NFT. According to an investigation by BuzzFeed News, the money was crowdfunded by the Dune-loving cryptocurrency enthusiasts of Spice DAO, who pitched in with the promise that they’d get to vote on the book’s future. Spice DAO paid more than a hundred times the modest estimate, taking home the book for $3 million. Imagine everyone’s surprise when Spice DAO swooped in with a bid that went way, way over asking price.

Last November, one such copy went up for auction at Christie’s, where appraisers expected it would sell for around $40,000. It’s estimated that somewhere between ten and twenty copies of Jodorowsky’s Dune still exist in the wild periodically, they come up at auction, fetching somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000. Before the project was ultimately canned, Jodorowsky presented studio executives with an extensive book of concept art, which included set designs, character designs, and a storyboard of the entire film sketched by Moebius, the legendary French cartoonist.

Dune book 3