SpiceDAO Roasted for Plans to Turn 'Dune' Art Book Into NFTs

Having reportedly paid $2.66 million at auction for the book which is roughly 100 times the original asking price, the decentralized autonomous organization, SpiceDAO, announced their latest acquisition on Twitter, outlining their intention to “make the book public (to the extent permitted by law),” “produce an original animated limited series inspired by the book and sell it to a streaming service” and “support derivative projects from the community.”

However, what they failed to realize is that they had only bought the edition of the book, not the rights to reproduce the work, just as buying a Spiderman comic doesn't give you the right to make a Spiderman movies as one commenter pointed out. SpiceDAO had in effect purchased a limited edition copy of the book and not the legal rights to the work.

To add insult to injury, the book has already been fully scanned and available online since 2011, making their whole plan to burn the copy as a marketing stunt in an effort to up the price of their planned NFT series. (Though their plan to sell a video of them burning the book as an NFT as well could still work.)

SpiceDAO's massive financial L aside, it is at least a good opportunity to revisit the illustrations by Moebius and H.R. Giger that were originally used to pitch the film adaptation. Given the popularity of Denis Villeneuve's latest iteration of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic, the phonebook-sized tome full of concept art, notes and more that went into the making of the avant-garde French-Chilean filmmaker's adaptation.

Photo via Christie's