I have heard from a fan who has, in his possession, the new "Extended Edition". Here's what he has found so far...
"...First, the good news: The anamorphic widescreen transfer of the 137-minute theatrical cut has been corrected for this new DVD master. If you recall, the previous version saw about a third of the film's print incorrectly flip-flopped, which simply did not jibe with what we remembered about the film in its previous video incarnations.
In addition, the DVD contains a section of deleted scenes that runs approximately 18 minutes in length. Some of the cut scenes that were rumored to have been filmed, among them Thufir Howat's death at the end of the film, are indeed present on this new DVD. Raffaella de Laurentiis confirmed that these were taken from the film's original 4-hour version Lynch assembled.
Now, the bad news: And there's quite a bit to share with you thus far:
- The extended version is still credited to Alan Smithee.
- The DVD lists the extended version as 2.35:1. This is not the case. It is in fact a 1.85:1 format, with the production painting prologue presented in a matted 1.85:1 format that removes some of the images from the screen. This is definitely not how we remember the extended version that was first telecast in 1988.
- The edit of the extended version retains all of those "extra" scenes that were sloppily edited together for broadcast, including the "scene" of the Reverend Mother's trip to Caladan. The shortened clip involving the Harkonnens is edited in this DVD, and the clip of Thufir Howat observing the destruction of the weirding modules is cut from the extended version (conforming to the extended version's broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel a few years ago, though that clip was retained as the final scene of Part 1 of the extended telecast back in 1988 - go figure).
- The theatrical trailer that was on the previous release has been bumped from this new DVD. Thankfully, I have kept the widescreen tape of the "erroneous" transfer, which has the trailer on it - no "D'oh!" this time around!
- No audio commentary from David Lynch or anyone involved in the film's production.
- All of the deleted scenes are culled from the film's workprint and are in production audio only, with the quality of the deleted scenes in a fairly good format (better than the deleted scenes on the "Star Trek" movie DVDs, but far from equal quality with both versions of the film.
- No audio commentary from Alan Smithee, either! I wonder why nobody has ever heard from him to begin with... (Gotta love the whole running gag! Heehee!)
- If you remember, at the time of the film's release in 1984 Waldenbooks released an audiotape commentary with David Lynch and Frank Herbert on translating "Dune" to film. I clearly remember getting this tape, but for the life of me I never had sense to keep it. This would have made for a great audio commentary addition on the DVD."
So the door is definitely open to do yet another fan-made extended cut of DUNE in the future. Questions, class?