Josh Zetumer is in negotiations to pen the latest incarnation of "
Dune," Frank Herbert's sprawling sci-fi epic, for Paramount Pictures.
The award-winning 1965 novel -- the first in a series of six books about a futuristic struggle for control of a precious spice called Melange on the desert planet Arrakis -- was first adapted by David Lynch into a financially and critically disastrous 1984 film (though Herbert apparently liked it). It also was turned into a more successful Sci Fi Channel miniseries in 2000.