DUNE REMAKE TAKEN BY PIERRE MOREL

Paramount has found a new director for their Dune remake.  Peter Berg dropped off the project in October to direct — I kid you not — a movie based on Battleship, the board game.  A movie I hope ends after 5 minutes when one side fires missles in a diagonal line and finds everything, including the stupid patrol boat.  I hate you so much, patrol boat. Um, anyway, Pierre Morel (Taken, Banlieue 13) is now helming the project, with new writers being sought to rewrite the original script by Josh Zetumer (Quantum of Solace).  At first it seems like an odd choice, but this makes me optimistic:

[Frank] Herbert’s novel—about an intergalactic struggle to control the supply of a valuable spice found only on the remote desert planet Arrakis—remains the biggest selling sci fi novel and it’s still enormously popular. Morel, for instance, is a long time fan who brought his well-worn copy of the novel with him to meetings at Paramount, sources said. [Variety]

Someone in Hollywood may have actually read the source material and formed some kind of emotional attachment and respect for it?  No way.  I thought they all just pretend to have read the script and parrot whatever adjective seems appropriate for the genre, and they don’t find out it’s awful until it’s half in the can, and that’s how movies like Old Dogs get made.