Following on from the success of The Elephant Man, the filmmaker George Lucas, himself a fan of Eraserhead, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in his Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi. Lynch refused, arguing that Lucas should direct the film himself as the movie should reflect his own vision, not Lynch's take on it.[41][53] Soon after however, the opportunity to direct another big-budget science fiction epic arose when Dino de Laurentiis of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group asked him to create a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune (1965).[53] Lynch agreed, and in doing so was also contractually obliged to produce two other works for the company.