Screen Rant » dune

Paramount’s ‘Dune’ Is Dead; ‘World War Z’ Still Alive

Sandy Schaefer — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:28:46 +0000

Paramount invested over four years’ time in their attempt to launch a new cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel, Dune, but the studio has officially lost the rights to the project.

Paramount is still striving to bring Max Book’s best-seller World War Z to the big screen, though, and is searching for assistance in financing the expensive zombpocalypse tale.

Taken director Pierre Morel was brought onboard last year to helm Dune after Peter Berg left the project to make Battleship instead (for an idea of what Berg had in mind, check out this Dune conceptual artwork).

According to Deadline, Dune rights holder Richard P. Rubinstein has admitted to being impressed with how Morel and screenwriter Chase Palmer reshaped Herbert’s sprawling source material into a feature-length script. What ultimately killed the ...

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Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: November 14, 2010

Niall Browne — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 18:03:05 +0000

This week:

Unstoppable is stoppable; Dune‘s future is looking bleak; Paramount readies some high-profile films; Warner Bros. want Tales From The Gangster Squad; Courtney Ford needs True Blood; will Merlin have magic? Women kick butt in The Athena Project; Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank and Ashton Kutcher get ready for New Year’s Eve; and lots more.

Last week’s champion Megamind and the Denzel Washington flick Unstoppable (review here), directed by Tony Scott, fought it out for the top spot over the weekend. It looks like the animated superhero film came out on top, after grossing an estimated $30.1 million, upping its total to $89.8 million.

That doesn’t mean that Washington’s film disappointed – as it grossed $23.5 million, which is business as usual for a Washington action effort.

Due ...

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Concept Art For Peter Berg’s Dune Remake

Rob Keyes — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:21:56 +0000

About a year ago, director Peter Berg jumped ship, leaving the Dune remake in favor of the $200 million Universal Pictures project, Battleship. Delays and delays seemingly forced Berg out of the director’s chair after having been attached for nearly two full years. Stepping in as a replacement was Pierre Morel who made his name helming Taken and this year’s From Paris with Love.

Even though Dune has has a rough few years moving in a forward direction, reports from the top of the year pointed towards Paramount wanting to put the movie on the fast track. In February, Chase Palmer was signed to completely rewrite the script by Josh Zetumer to fit Morel’s vision for the project. If you were interested in Berg’s highly customized adaptation and what his Dune ...

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DVD/Blu-ray Breakdown: April 27, 2010

Mike Eisenberg — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:34:38 +0000

This week in the Breakdown we’ve got a handful of greats coming to Blu-ray and a two quite different new releases. Heath Ledger’s final performance heads to the shelves and the middle-aged comedy It’s Complicated will hope for a continued success.

Next week should prove one of the more exciting of the year as Saving Private Ryan makes its way to Blu-ray, which is enough to rank it near the top for many waiting for Spielberg’s war classic on the format.

All releases this week come in DVD and Blu-ray so take your pick on what platform to enjoy your home entertainment.

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NEW RELEASES:

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – This Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits) film embraced the strange worlds the ...

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Pierre Morel’s ‘Dune’ Gets New Screenwriter

Ross Miller — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:02:26 +0000

In the first few days of this year we reported that Taken director, Pierre Morel is replacing Peter Berg as director of the upcoming remake/re-imagining of Dune (Berg is off directing Battleship). For those of you who are fans of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 book you will be glad to hear Morel is looking to stay very faithful to the source material with his movie.

There’s been speculation over what’s going on with the script for Dune: Berg was supposedly knee-deep in developing a script by Josh Zetumer (Bourne 4), however when Morel came aboard supposedly a new writer was going to be brought in to make major changes to Zetumer’s script, in order to get it closer to what the original book is (I’m assuming that means Zetumer’s wasn’t all that faithful).

Now we learn ...

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Pierre Morel Talks ‘Dune’

Ross Miller — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:04:40 +0000

Last week news emerged that Taken director Pierre Morel was brought on-board to direct Dune, replacing previously attached director, Peter Berg. This came as a bit of surprise as two other fairly big directors – The Descent‘s Neil Marshall and District 9‘s Neill Blomkamp – were likely candidates to take over where Berg left. Nonetheless, I think Morel is a solid choice even if he isn’t the first director I’d think of for the project.

At the time of the announcement, word was that Morel plans on making a very faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s original 1965 book. Now we get more of a confirmation of that notion as, during an interview with MTV, Morel talked more about his directing intentions for Dune and how faithful he’s planning on being to the source material. Here’s what ...

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Dune Gets ‘Taken’ Off Peter Berg’s Hands By New Director

Ross Miller — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:02:07 +0000

Back in August of last year it was reported that Hancock director Peter Berg had left the long gestating Dune remake/new adaptation. This came as a bit of a surprise since Berg had been working pretty hard on the project for quite a while, with reassurance coming from the director himself that the project was still a “go,” just a month before he left.

He has Battleships being attacked by aliens to attend to for the time being, anyway…

At the time of Berg’s departure from the project, two names were being thrown around to replace him in the director’s chair: Neill Blomkamp (District 9) and Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday). Of the two, it seemed like Marshall was maybe the more likely, since Blomkamp has stated before he isn’t particularly interested in doing “massive budget films, or creating ...

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Dune Update: Who’s Replacing Peter Berg?

Rob Keyes — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:36:25 +0000

Two months ago, director/producer/writer Peter Berg assured folks that his Dune project was still a go and that they were trying to hammer down a story from the complex book that would work for fans and non-fans alike. Now, we’re being assured that Berg isn’t even involved any more…

So, with him out of the picture, who will step in to take on the remake? Well, apparently it’s down to Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday) and the recently popular geek icon Neill Blomkamp (District 9).

A feature film remake for Frank Herbert’s Dune has been in the works for quite some time. With Berg and his Film 44 production company backing out of the project, Paramount is on the hunt for a director to take over.

According to Pajiba, the director has to be able ...

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Director Peter Berg Assures That ‘Dune’ is Still On

Paul Young — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:59:54 +0000

Director Peter Berg is a movie producing machine. Not only does he have the recently announced Battleship movie adaptation and a Hancock 2 sequel on the horizon, but he is still very much involved with the third version of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction masterpiece, Dune. With all those movies requiring heavy involvement from Berg, it’s no wonder he recently announced dropping another project, Red Steel.

A couple of years ago, Berg told the world he was attached to the big screen adaptation of Dune but since then the project has been bogged down in the seventh level of script writing hell. Dune may very well be a sprawling story, too complex and deep to tell in one two-hour movie. That complexity is most likely the reason why the current script is 200 pages long!

Here ...

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Peter Berg’s ‘Dune’ Remake Will Be Very Different

Rob Keyes — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:30:25 +0000

Have you ever seen the 1984 David Lynch film, Dune? How about the more recent TV mini-series of the same name from 2000?

Both are adaptations of Frank Herbert’s famous novel and there were quite a few differences from the movie and the mini-series from the source and each other. Now, there’s a remake on the way courtesy of director Peter Berg (Hancock, The Kingdom) which is supposedly set to be even more different from both of those.

The screenplay for the remake was written by Joshua Zetumer and in an interview with SCI FI Wire at the Television Critics Association summer press tour last week, Peter Berg talked a little bit about his take on Dune:

“I think I had a much more different experience, I think, with the book than David Lynch did… To me, ...

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