Paramount buries Dune remake
Worm-riding, sweat-drinking spice war epic on hold
The planned Paramount Pictures movie adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune has been cancelled.
The attempt to get the 1965 sci-fi classic once again adapted for the silver screen came to nothing after more than a year of development. Paramount had recruited Taken helmsman Pierre Morel to direct.
Richard Rubinstein, who controls the rights to the book, explained: "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 script in question was knocked together by Morel and Chase Palmer, and they apparently "cut the mammoth subject matter down to a compelling story that could be told at feature length".
Rubinstein said he'll probably talk to both men with a view to resurrecting the project, which will need someone with very deep pockets to fund its estimated $100m production budget. ®
COMMENTS
Am I the only one?
...who liked the original? I thought it was a flawed masterpiece. Despite some very ropey moments some of the effects were amazing for the time and Lynch's direction lent the film his idiosyncratic discomfiting feel, particularly the Harkonnen scenes.
"cut the mammoth subject matter down to a compelling story that could be told at feature length".
...in other words - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, and in between all that some people get shot. A beginning, a muddle and an end, like every feckin film that's come out of the USA in decades.
Thank <insert false deity>
Why do they insist on redoing everything? Heath Ledger has been dead over a year, isn't it time to do Batman again?
There are a lot of talented writers around who never get a chance because hollywood idiots would rather piss money away on overpaid 're-imaging' hack writers who cant do anything original.
The inevitable failure would get blamed on piracy obviously.
In the future they should just flush their investment down the toilet themselves to save us from their bad creative waste.
Fixed that story for you
Droid meets droid, droid becomes chameleon, droid loses chameleon, chameleon turns into blob, droid gets blob back again. Blob meets blob, blob goes off with blob and droid loses blob, chameleon and droid.
Mine's the furry-collar anorak with "Jupiter Mining Corporation" on the back.
The Lynch film is a classic
I love it, it's always been a favourite of mine and while the whole weirding way bit was squiffily done, Sting, Patrick Stewart with hair and flying fat men make it a greta film.
In fact I shall watch it again tonight. The spice must flow!
