Now everyone knows There are a lot of things wrong with “Dune” 1984. The film has lived in a special kind of infamy since David Lynch and Universal Pictures unleashed it on the world, when the $40 million sci-fi epic exploded at the box office and garnered little than critical contempt. Yet there are those who claim that “Dune” is much better than its reputation suggestsand Denis Villeneuve’s recent big-screen treatment of Frank Herbert’s novel has given rise to much revisionism of 1984’s “Dune.”

However, one of the most interesting things about Lynch’s ill-fated film isn’t necessarily how critics and audiences overlooked its many charms in 1984, but how many assumptions surrounded the project. The number of directors vying to make this film was, for example, frankly dizzying, with everyone from Ridley Scott to David Lean circling the project. Then, once Lynch was finally confirmed as director, he spent six months working on a script alongside co-writers Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, only to abandon much of what the trio had created for rewrite the film five times.

What would ‘Dune’ look like if Ridley Scott had been at the helm? How much less “Lynchian” would it be if its director had preserved the contributions of Bergen and De Vore? Perhaps even more intriguing is the question of how the film would have been made if Lynch had cast some of the many actors who at one point were considered for the film and have since become major stars – including a young Kevin Costner, who probably would have had a much different career had he been cast in the lead role.

There are several tantalizing hypotheses regarding the casting of “Dune” 1984. For example, David Lynch turned down Glenn Close for role in ‘Dune’ entrusting the role of Lady Jessica to Francesca Annis (who did a remarkable job). At first, Lynch was also determined to cast Val Kilmer as Paul Atreides before Kyle MacLachlan auditioned and impressed the director so much that he immediately cast him in the lead role.

Before MacLachlan’s casting, Kilmer wasn’t the only choice Lynch had in mind for Paul. In Max Evry’s book “A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s Dune – An Oral History” (via Crushable), the cast and crew recall what was an exhaustive casting process in which several actors were considered for the lead role. Production office assistant Craig Campobasso revealed that alongside Michael Biehn, Lewis Smith and Kilmer, a young Kevin Costner screen tested for the role of Paul Atreides. However, according to the assistant, several of these actors, including Costner, simply couldn’t do the role justice.

“Michael Biehn didn’t measure up,” Campobasso said, “not Kevin Costner. It’s not that they’re bad actors; they just didn’t fit Paul-Muad’Dib’s criteria because that you’re looking for that inner strength.” He notably called out Costner: “Kevin Costner was not known at that time, and I remember him being nervous because I helped him put on the costume. Paul-Muad’Dib and I could sense his nervousness about it. “

Although Kyle MacLachlan landed the lead role in David Lynch’s “Dune,” it proved to be a double-edged sword. After the film bombed and was derided by critics, the actor found himself something of a pariah in Hollywood, telling the Los Angeles Times he felt his career was “like a ship, you could feel it sinking.” MacLachlan had to wait for Lynch to save him from post-“Dune” obscurity by putting him in “Blue Velvet.” In that sense, Kevin Costner and Val Kilmer were probably lucky in this particular case, as there is no guarantee that Lynch would have done the same for them.

In Costner’s case, he would give what turned out to be his breakout performance just a year after “Dune” debuted, playing a cowboy named Jake in 1985’s “Silverado” — the film that started Costner’s love affair with westerns and part of the reason he continues to make them today. He then followed that up with his first starring role in “The Intouchables” in 1987, securing his position as one of Hollywood’s brightest young stars. That’s probably a lot more than he could have hoped for had he taken on Lynch’s ill-fated sci-fi spectacle – although there’s a chance Costner wouldn’t have struggled in the same way MacLachlan did . Hell, maybe we even would have brought something unique to “Dune” that would have tempered the critical response. But considering how bad this movie was, probably not.