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The Art of Special Effects
Sotheby’s upcoming auction celebrates the artists working behind the scenes to make films from ‘Dune’ to ‘Blade Runner’ feel larger than life.
I n 1982, science fiction illustrator and author Ron Miller was sitting in his studio when the phone rang. Tony Masters, the British production designer who’d worked on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, was on the line. Masters had recently picked up a copy of The Grand Tour, a book about the solar system that Miller had co-written and illustrated – and it got Masters thinking that Miller’s style might be useful for an ambitious new film in the works. “We’re making a movie of Dune,” Miller remembers Masters telling him. “We thought the paintings of Mars you did for this book look just like Arrakis. We wanted to know if you might be interested in coming to work with us?”
Although Miller had neither read Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel nor worked on a film before, he quickly accepted the offer. Miller ended up working as the film’s production illustrator, a role that involved him creating paintings from designs, sketches, and the script itself ahead of the shoots for the film. Miller went on to have a long career in production illustration and design in Hollywood, where he collaborated with visionaries on science fiction and fantasy films. Over the years, Miller accumulated production sketches, concept drawings, and scripts from the films and various projects he worked on. But at a certain point these items sat gathering dust in archives. “I thought, well, there are better homes for them,” Miller says.
Miller’s trove includes concept drawings he made for the late David Lynch’s Dune (1984), in addition to materials related to unrealized film projects including David Cronenberg’s Total Recall (1990), George Miller’s initial take on Contact (1997), an archive related to an unproduced James Cameron project on space travel to Mars and even a rare copy of the script for Lynch’s unfinished film Ronnie Rocket. These extraordinary treasures comprise only a fraction of Sotheby’s landmark auction “There Are Such Things:” 20th Century Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy on Screen, celebrating the remarkable art of special effects. Open for bidding March 21-April 3, 2025, the auction tells an enrapturing story about the brilliant artists whose innovations in genre have transformed the medium of film.
“Special effects artistry works aren’t typically explored at auction,” says Chaia Mascall, an Associate Cataloguer of Pop Culture at Sotheby’s. “The market itself is still a little bit underestimated,” she adds. But given the popularity of past Sotheby’s sales like 2023’s Snow Crash (which featured objects exploring the impact of Neal Stephenson’s science fiction classic), there’s a surging interest for other offerings beyond the usual posters and costumes one might see related to film franchises. “There is a huge appetite for material that explores the behind-the-scenes world of our most beloved cultural productions,” Mascall says.
Highlights from this sale include a three-foot-tall maquette of ET (the Extraterrestrial) that’s remained in excellent condition. Used in the movie’s closet scene, the maquette was created by Carlo Rambaldi, the late Italian special effects maestro who Mascall describes as the “go-to guy to create something creepy for your movie.” A rare animatronic study he made of ET’s eyes, which were modeled on the Rambaldi family cat, is also included as part of the sale. Several of the Sandworm creatures that Rambaldi created for Dune, included in various background shots of Lynch’s flop-turned-cult flick, are particularly notable pieces in the auction as well.
Additionally, the sale boasts a series of concept drawings from Blade Runner (1982) detailing the way Ridley Scott’s film built its idiosyncratic Los Angeles setting of the future. “Every science-fiction film that ever came after Blade Runner references it in some way,” says Mascall. “It’s really exciting to have original material that created this thing that has visually changed cinema thereafter.” A wealth of pieces in the auction are culled from an extensive collection of Universal Pictures’ inventive midcentury horror works, including half-sheets from The Wolf Man (1941) and Dracula’s cape from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). These intricate items provide a counter to the longstanding narrative of the horror genre as merely low-budget, B-movie fare. “Starting with Dracula in 1931 through The Invisible Man franchise, Universal Studios really dedicated itself to becoming not only the home of horror, but exploring what the artistry of the horror genre could be,” says Mascall.
Moreover, the sale tracks how these innovations in special effects help pave the way for our contemporary moment: A time when horror has become the fastest-growing film genre in the world, doubling its market share in just 10 years according to The Washington Post. But even within such an inventive genre, nostalgia for the past remains strong. Modernized spins on classic franchises like Nosferatu have recently shown in theaters, with Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on deck for later this year. Even a third Denis Villleneuve Dune movie is in the works, as is the sequel to Wicked. It’s all the more reason to elevate these touchstones of culture, beautiful objects loaded with meaning that allow one to peer into, as Mascall describes it, “the minds behind the creations that you love the most.”
