Search for Dune Director Given Spring 2011 Deadline

News, Projects

Deadline is reporting that the rights holders for Dune, the Frank Herbert science fiction/fantasy novel, are giving Paramount Studios until 2011 to get the movie made or they will not be granting an option extension.

Dune, which has been the subject of a previous film adaptation by David Lynch and several SyFy Channel mini-series, has been in development at Paramount for the last several years with directors such as Peter Berg (Hancock, Friday Night Lights) and Pierre Morel (Taken) attempting to take a crack at the source material.

If Paramount does not put the film into active development within the year, the rights to the film will revert back to the Frank Herbert estate. At the moment, a draft of the script has been completed by Chase Palmer but no director is currently attached. While Morel is not attached to direct, he is still listed as an executive producer on the film.

This rush to meet option deadlines has already forced Sony to greenlight a Ghost Rider sequel and Warner Brothers to push a new Superman movie into production to avoid litigation that could change the copyright ownership for the character.

Robert Saucedo is an avid movie watcher with seriously poor sleeping habits. The Mikey from Life cereal of film fans, Robert will watch just about anything — good, bad or ugly. He has written about film for newspapers, radio and online for the last 10 years. This has taken a toll on his sanity — of that you can be sure. Follow him on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500.