Hey!  Wanna hear something really wild?  Peter Berg, the actor guy who directed Friday Night Lights and The KingdomHe’s attached to Paramount’s proposed, mega-budgeted remake of Dune!

The especially breathtaking aspect of Variety‘s non-story is that they’ve added zero detail to AICN‘s original spy report.  We already knew that the Herbert family was in talks with Paramount and producer Kevin Misher, while Peter Berg confirmed his interest in an interview with MTV Movies way back in December.  Is it a shocker that Paramount sees the property as a tentpole film?  Nope.  Are there screenwriters attached?  Not yet.  Did they go through all the trouble of securing the rights so they could film the least faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic imaginable?  Amazingly, the studio wants to go the faithful route (with genuine production value, unlike the dull Sci-Fi Channel rendition). 

Oh, wait!  Here’s something!  “The filmmakers consider [Dune‘s] theme of finite ecological resources particularly timely.”  Eh, sounds like a bunch of Bene Gesserit hooey.  

I’m still not sure what a Berg-directed version of Dune will look like, and that’s why I think he’s an ideal choice; after the beautifully bonkers Lynch take and the tedious television miniseries, why not try something unexpected?  Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men was one of the more interesting science fiction films of the last ten years because it didn’t look or play like a conventional genre flick.  Same goes for Aronofsky’s The Fountain.  Even if Berg falls flat on his face, at least we know he won’t be pandering – and I’ll take an honest failure over studio-processed mediocrity every time. 

Guess we’ll have to start snooping around with regards to who’s being courted to write this epic.  Expect to read about it in Variety sometime this July!