It’s been an interesting day for science fiction movies as Paramount Pictures has put the long-in-development Dune remake, once to be helmed by the likes of Peter Berg and Taken‘s Pierre Morel, into turnaround, according to Deadline. This basically means they have no plans of making the movie.
Meanwhile, Doug Liman’s Untitled Moon Project (formerly “Luna”), which the Mr. & Mrs. Smith director has been talking about since around the time of Jumper, may be picking up steam at Paramount, according to The Hollywood Reporter Previously set-up at DreamWorks with Jake Gyllenhaal attached (but no longer), Liman has been meeting with actors in Los Angeles including Andrew (The Amazing Spider-Man) Garfield, Emile (Speed Racer) Hirsch and Chris (Star Trek) Pine as well as meeting actresses Rosario Dawson, Megan Fox, Rachel McAdams, Eva Mendes, Zoe Saldana and Olivia Wilde and will continue with meetings tomorrow. Although there’s no green light as of yet, Liman would like to start shooting by late summer with hopes that the right cast can get the project moving forward.
Having gone through a number of rewrites, the film centers around renegade former space employees who travel the world stealing equipment to build a rocket that will take them to the moon, including stealing an ex-NASA employee.
The story goes on to say that Liman’s other sci-fi thriller in development, All You Need to Kill, has been cooling off at Warners, possibly due to the forward movement of another Japanese manga-inspired film Akira, which has found new screenwriters and also has been looking at actors.
Lastly, New York Mag’s Vulture is reporting problems with director Marc Forster’s adaptation of Max Brooks’ best-selling zombie novel World War Z starring Brad Pitt, with Paramount trying to find a financing partner to help foot the reported $125 million bill. The story speculates that Paramount may pull the plug if they can’t find one but also suggests that David Ellison may get involved. Another interesting aspect of the story is that Forster has guaranteed Paramount a PG-13 rating for the zombie flick.
