Pierre Morel discusses his 3D plans for Dune

Although director Pierre Morel is known for hard action (DISTRICT 13, TAKEN), he’s got big ideas for his adaptation of the huge sci-fi classic DUNE. Big enough that it might need an extra dimension.

“I’d love it to be 3D, of course,” Morel tells IGN. “It’s the kind of movie that has the scope to be 3D. Will [Paramount] do it in 3D? I’d push for that, but I don’t know. As a viewer, I’ve just been watching AVATAR with my kids twice in the theater already and had a blast. It’s an amazing experience.“

As for his take on Frank Herbert’s sandy world, it won’t be anything like that of previously attached director Peter Berg (who mystifyingly opted to make BATTLESHIP instead). “We’re starting from scratch,” says Morel. “Peter had an approach which was not mine at all, and we’re starting over again. I don’t think we’re going to keep any elements of the Peter Berg script. It was good, actually. It was interesting. It was just not our vision.”

And how will Morel differentiate his approach from the book and David Lynch’s infamously weird film? “Everybody refers to both the book and to David Lynch’s film, which was in a way a monument to the ’80s. It became a huge event. It didn’t do well theatrically, I think, but in a way it kind of marked and printed an image on DUNE. Everybody now who reads DUNE reads it with David Lynch’s images in mind. So we have to get away from that. It’s not a remake of David Lynch’s movie. We’re doing a re-reading, a brand new approach on the book, a very true approach to the book, the original material. So we will have to deal with trying to erase the image that David Lynch did so we can propose our image.”