Pizza owner hires muralist to paint Dune-inspired masterpiece

Dune is currently a huge hit, and tons of people on social media are talking about the movie setting, the aesthetics, the big battles, and uh … Duncan Idaho. There is a story on social media that is not necessarily related to the movie, but it is about the beauty of the original material.

A tweet posted on October 24, which has since gone viral, reads: “I’m going to see Dune not because everyone is obsessed with him, but because of my friend’s account of spending money he didn’t have on a huge mural of dunes in the garbage area behind his pizzeria inaccessible to customers because ‘he needed her to focus only before the big pizzas.’

It’s a great tweet, but the story got even better when the artist stepped up to reveal images of the mural. Since Dune is originally a book series, there is no consistent visual representation of its world, so there were many options for how the mural might look. What elements of fiction would it include? Well, it turns out it’s a mind-blowing masterpiece with a few nods to the extended canon that hardcore Dune fans will recognize.

Polygon spoke to the artist, Brian Gonnella, who works as a muralist in Pittsburgh, through Twitter. “Matt (the owner) had bought me some paintings from a local gallery / bar,” Gonnella wrote. “At that time I was very influenced by science fiction.”

Gonnella was commissioned to paint the huge mural behind the Pizza Pronto restaurant. “His only condition was that it had to be Dune,” Gonnella continued.. “No pizza puns, strictly Dune, and I mean deep Dune tradition. So I presented him with a concept and he dug it up and we went from there. “

Gonnella used much of his natural style on the mural, but was also inspired by the deep well of Dune canon and adaptations of popular culture. “I took some signs from the Dune [of] my youth, the miniseries and the sequel to the Sci-Fi Channel Sons of Dune starring a young James McAvoy, and a Google search for past covers, but most of this came from my brain. It was the same aesthetic as the sci-fi paintings the guy bought me years before … Dune.”

Sharp-eyed dune fans can even see an unusual character cameo. “The three-eyed guy is God Emperor Leto II, son of Paul Atreides … it’s from a sequel book [author Frank] Herbert wrote called God Emperor of Dune. Like I said, deep knowledge. “

Image: Brian gonnella

According to a later tweet, the mural is in a place where “no one sees it.” But it seems to serve its purpose.

“I have never seen [Matt] he did his battle meditation, but when I finished, he just stared at it and smoked a cigar for about 10 minutes in complete silence, so maybe he was visualizing it at the time, “Gonnella wrote.