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Concept Art : Dune Themed Travel Posters

21 Oct

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That long-awaited, big-screen movie version of Dune is DEAD

23 Mar


source:Blastr.com
by:Don Kaye

After four years of development, the plug has been pulled on the latest attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune to the screen.

Deadline reports that with the rights to the material about to revert back to its owners after four years, Paramount Pictures has decided to cut its losses and give up on a new big-screen version of the book, which has been filmed twice already as a 1984 movie and a 2000 Syfy miniseries.

Richard P. Rubinstein, who owns the film rights to Dune, said, “Paramount’s option has expired and we couldn’t reach an agreement. 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.”

The reason why Paramount didn’t want to pick up the option and keep working at it? Money, says Rubinstein, who added, “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.”

The ins and outs of the latest Dune movie can be found here. The studio went through two directors and several screenplays, finally getting a script (by Chase Palmer) that everyone was happy with. But the more than $100 million needed to get the project off the ground ultimately made Paramount too nervous to pull the trigger.

Rubinstein said that right now, Dune has “no commitments or attachments,” but he remains optimistic about getting the movie made: “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.” He added that if the project finds a home at another studio, he may revisit Palmer’s script and get back in touch with the last director involved with the picture, Pierre Morel (Taken).

Meanwhile, according to Vulture, Dune isn’t the only big-budget sci-fi movie that is running into trouble at Paramount. The studio may also scrap another long-in-development project, an adaptation of Max Brooks’ excellent zombie apocalypse novel World War Z, if it can’t find an investing partner to pony up some of the $125 million price tag. That’s after star/producer Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster have already agreed to make it a PG-13 picture. This all comes on the heels of a different studio, Universal, dropping Guillermo del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness because he wouldn’t budge from an R rating for that $150 million epic.

RoboCop to get rebooted by screenwriter of failed Dune remake

12 Mar


source:Blastr.com
By Don Kaye

You’re supposedly one of Hollywood’s hottest screenwriters, and you get a chance to reboot Dune. But what happens when that fails to take off? You get a shot at writing a RoboCop remake instead.

That’s the strange case of screenwriter Josh Zetumer, who has built a reputation as one of the best new writers in the business without having a single full script produced for the screen yet. According to Deadline, MGM has now hired him to write a new version of the 1987 sci-fi classic for recently hired Brazilian director Jose Padilha.

Zetumer first got onto the Hollywood radar when his script Infiltrator made it onto the “Black List”—an annual roundup of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. Following that, he got a job with Paramount to write Dune, which was supposed to be directed by Peter Berg (who’s now doing the upcoming Battleship). Zetumer wrote several drafts of Dune before that project went on the back burner, and for good measure he also wrote a fourth Bourne movie that also went unproduced.

Zetumer has also done rewrites on the James Bond thriller Quantum of Solace and this summer’s alien invasion film The Darkest Hour, but he has yet to have an official screenplay credit show up onscreen.

Now, that goes on all the time, so it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not talented or can’t deliver the goods. The RoboCop remake has been in development for years (Darren Aronofsky of Black Swan fame was going to direct at one point), but MGM’s cash troubles halted the project for a while. Now it’s back on track, with Padilha and Zetumer on board, and hopefully we’ll get to see what all the fuss is about for the latter when this thing comes out in 2013.

Dune In Trouble?

10 Nov

Clock ticking on new adaptation


Source: Deadline
by:Owen Williams

Muad’dib has misplaced the Weirding Module, the sandworms are hibernating and the spice flow has slowed to a trickle: it seems all is not well on Paramount’s new adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi cornerstone Dune.

Deadline’s story concerns itself with the increasing power of rights-holders in Hollywood, leading to a situation we’ve seen multiple times recently (especially with comics properties like Superman, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider) where a studio must get a film into production or lose its option entirely.

Paramount has been slowly developing Dune for four years now. Peter Berg (Welcome to the Jungle, Hancock) was attached to direct for a while before opting for Battleships, and last we heard Pierre Morel (Taken, From Paris With Love) was enthusiastically basking in the director’s chair.

That no longer seems to be the case. Paramount haven’t cancelled the film, but they will lose it if they haven’t set a production date in stone by next spring, and Deadline report that the studio is “going out to directors today”, Morel is now described as an executive producer, which may simply be in recognition of his work with Chase Palmer on the current draft of the screenplay (Palmer was reportedly writing it according to Morel’s particular specifications). So that explains why he’d be eyeing Ouija.

It’s hard to imagine Paramount allowing a project as potentially massive as Dune to slip through their fingers. But with the colossal budget necessary, the dense complexity of the source material, the famous collapse of previous attempts (including ones by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott) and the (perhaps unfair) howls of derision at David Lynch’s version still echoing almost thirty years on, the studio will be treading very carefully.

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