Corona | Coming Attractions

The film rights to Dune are no longer held by Paramount Pictures. After four years of developing the project, and at different times attaching directors Peter Berg and Pierre Morel to the project, the studio decided not to renew the rights. They have now reverted back to Richard P. Rubenstein and his New Amsterdam production company.

"I'm going to look at my options, and whether I wind up taking the script we developed in turnaround, or start over, I'm not sure yet," said Rubenstein to Deadline, referring to the draft that screenwriter Chase Palmer and Morel worked on. Rubenstein says that this latest version of the script could be made for $100 million dollars and collapsed Frank Herbert's story down to "feature length" size.

"Sure, it’s frustrating, how long this has taken, but most of what I’ve done that worked out well over the years, like the miniseries The Stand, took a long time," Rubinstein added. "Since I know what I want, eventually, I’ll find someone who’ll agree with me. What I like is that talent has interesting things to say on how they would approach it."

Screenwriter Chase Palmer has been hired by director Pierre Morel to rewrite the Dune screenplay. Palmer has a couple of produced credits to his name that are short films but that's attracted the attention of studios and given him opportunities to perform rewrites on other developing feature length projects. Two of the projects that Palmer is working on would also see him employed as their director.

"[My movie] is all about the first book. I'm trying to be very respectful to the original novel." That's what newly attached Dune director Pierre Morel had to say to MTV about his vision for what he hopes will be his next project. It's the first time Morel has talked about his involvement with Dune since word broke last week about his involvement. "But it's a challenge; there's a lot of expectation, all the readers will be waiting for me with their shotguns. All the non-readers will also be waiting for us, because it's such a complex, rich novel and you have to make it accessible to those who have not read the book. So, it's a tough challenge but I’m very excited about that."

Morel said of the 1984 adaptation, "As a David Lynch movie, I loved it. As a Dune fan, I was not such a big fan." Morel's been a fan of Dune for 30 years after he read the first novel at the age of 15. "The fun story, actually, is that there were six books in that first series that Frank Herbert wrote," the filmmaker explains. "Every time I was going to buy a new one – because I couldn't buy all six at one time – I was reading the previous ones so I would not forget anything. So, by the time I bought the sixth book I had already read the first one six times! So, I’m a hardcore fan."

Taken director Pierre Morel is the new creative talent just hired for Paramount's Dune movie project. Morel is a longtime fan of Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel and proved it to studio exec by taking his well-thumbed copy of the novel to creative meetings. The studio remains committed to developing Dune as a tentpole release and is now looking for a new screenwriter to help Morel shape the project according to his vision.

After developing his version of a Dune movie for Paramount for two years, director Peter Berg has departed with no given reason stated. The word around town is that the studio has two candidates in mind for who could replace Berg: Descent director Neil Marshall and District 9 director Neill Blomkamp.