Director Pierre Morel replaces Berg in Dune adaptation

05 January 2010

John Howell

The upcoming Dune remake is still moving along, but with Pierre Morel instead of Peter Berg, according to Variety. Paramount Pictures has announced that Pierre Morel will direct the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction classic instead. Was Peter Berg sacked I wonder? It seems that way.

Peter Berg has left the Dune adaptation to direct Battleship, a movie based (disturbingly!) on the Hasbro board game of the same name. I can’t imagine if given the choice as a director you would select Battleship over Dune.

Pierre Morel has directed only three features to date, District 13 (nothing to do with District 9!), Taken (a hostage drama with Liam Neeson) and From Paris with Love (a romantic comedy with John Travolta to be released in February).

This is good news (I think). Peter Berg seemed like exactly the wrong choice for the new Dune movie.You can read our feelings about that here. Some of the comments he made about the production - for those who knew a bit about the novels - appeared way off target.

Misher Films will produce with New Amsterdam's Richard Rubenstein. Richard Rubenstein produced the two Dune miniseries for the SyFy Channel: Dune and its sequel Children of Dune. A financially disappointing and artistically flawed Dune feature film was directed by David Lynch in 1984.

Apparently Paramount will use the last draft Peter Berg worked on with screenwriter Josh Zetumer (Zetumer has been writing the fourth Bourne movie too). However, they will hire another screenwriter to finish it off. No information on when we'll see this new version, but it appears it has overcome a speed bump and is back on track once more.

Pierre Morel is also working on a sequel to Taken and an action thriller with Paramount called Pursuit.

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