The suits worn by the Guild members were body bags that were found in a disused fire station dating back to the early 1920s. The bags had actually been used several times, something that was kept from the cast members until after shooting was completed.
Writer and director David Lynch has said he considers this movie the only real failure of his career. To this day, he refuses to talk about the production in great detail, and has refused numerous offers to work on a Special Edition DVD. Lynch had always claimed that revisiting the movie would be too painful an experience to endure. As of 2024, Lynch has clarified that a Director's Cut is impossible, as producer Dino De Laurentiis was on set at all times, and never allowed him to shoot scenes the way he wanted to or to take liberties with the source material Lynch felt he needed. De Laurentiis, in turn, regretted that he relented to the studio's request to cut back the movie to two hours, claiming that the original 3-hr version was "fantastic," but after cutting out an hour, "it was not the same movie. We destroyed the movie in the editing room."
At that time, Sir Patrick Stewart was completely unfamiliar about who Sting was as a musician. When meeting him on-set, he asked if he was a solo artist, to which Sting replied he was in a band called The Police. Totally unaware, Stewart thought Sting played in a police-band.
Sir Patrick Stewart's casting as Gurney Halleck was actually a mistake. Director David Lynch thought he had hired a different looking actor, as he had only seen Stewart wearing a costume and heavy makeup that made him look older in a play. This is the look the director was expecting, and when he showed up with his actual face, Lynch was disappointed at first.
Feyd-Rautha was originally to have stepped out of the "steam bath" nude. Sting had agreed to shoot the scene nude, but the studio panicked and told the costume designers that they had to put something on him. The skimpy winged g-string he wore was made almost at the very last minute before the scene was set to film.
David Lynch: A radio operator on the mining ship that Paul and Duke Leto Atreides rescue from a sandworm.
David Lynch: [Lincoln] Lynch disowned the extended television cut. He chose the name "Judas Booth" to appear as the screenwriter. This name is a combination of Judas Iscariot, the apostle that betrayed Jesus Christ, and John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin. With this in-joke, Lynch meant that the studio betrayed him, and killed the movie. The director's credit that is usual in these cases is Alan Smithee.
David Lynch: Disowned the extended cut shown on television in 1988. He was open to creating a new edit, but the studio produced it without him due to his preoccupation with filming Sailor & Lula (1990). As director, he was credited as "Alan Smithee," and as writer, he was credited as "Judas Booth," a reference to Judas Iscariot and John Wilkes Booth.