The Crypto Project That Thought It Had The Copyright To Dune Is No More

thegamer.com:

Earlier this year, Spice DAO became Twitter's main character of the day. On January 15, the group announced that it had purchased the story bible for a Dune movie that was never released, set to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. This long-lost version of Dune has been the subject of intrigue for some time. So, when Spice DAO purchased a book about the movie for €2.66 million, it was excited to make the film happen in some form.

However, as many pointed out, simply buying a book about the movie did not give them the copyright to the Dune franchise. Nevertheless, the group announced that it wanted to not only release the book to the public, but also produce an animated series based on the scrapped film. Now, months later, it's giving up on both of these aims - and is even selling the book it fought so hard to get.

Related: Dune Interview: Capturing The Scale, What David Lynch Couldn't Do, And Paul's Return To The Womb

As reported by The Verge, Spice DAO is rebranding as the Spice Club, and has done away with its $SPICE token. Investors have been able to cash in their $SPICE, as the studio appears to be moving away from the crypto scene to fund its media efforts.

The book will be sold next year, likely hoping that the release of Dune: Part Two will drum up some interest. Some changes are happening right away, however, with project lead, Kortelin, stepping down effective immediately.

All in all, this is a pretty disastrous turn of events for a group that was planning to sell a Dune series to a major streaming service. Suddenly without its project lead - and likely with a whole bunch of token refunds to dish out - it's not known if any of the group's Dune efforts will continue.

However, going by a statement put out by