neil marshall

I was never fully on-board with the idea of Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) directing the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, but it's all a moot point now, since Berg and his production company have passed on the $175 million project for Paramount Pictures.

This means the search for a new director is on, and, according to Pajiba, Paramount has their eye on two genre filmmakers: Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday, upcoming Centurion) and Neill Blomkamp (District 9). It's reported that producer Kevin Misher is a big advocate of Marshall, but the studio isn't 100% sure they can turn over a potentially huge franchise to someone who has yet to prove his blockbuster chops. Blomkamp was able to turn his own modestly budgeted original work of science-fiction into a critical and commercial success, but he has only one feature film under his belt so far.

Is Blomkamp the right director for Dune or is Marshall the man for the job?

We were skeptical when it was announced that Robert Rodriguez was producing a new Predator movie titled Predators, but if this very cool rumor is correct then here's a film that just shot up to the top of our Awesomeness meter. Here's Peter Martin reporting for Cinematical:

My principles may be crumbling, just a little. Neil Marshall (pictured) is in talks to direct Predators, according to Bloody Disgusting, citing an anonymous tipster. At this point, it's very much a rumor -- for all we know, Marshall was visiting a friend in the commissary at 20th Century Fox and was seen in close proximity to an executive -- but of all the possible candidates to helm a sequel to the alien hunter franchise, I'd definitely be down with Marshall.

He has three features to his credit: The Descent is the best and most widely-acclaimed, a feverish nightmare in which a group of women explore a cave and discover deadly denizens, to their dismay. I got a huge kick out of the bloody, funny, pulse-pounding Dog Soldiers, featuring Scottish soldiers on a training run who encounter werewolves, and, though I was decidedly in the minority, really enjoyed the post-Apocalyptic action epic Doomsday. The latter was his first with a Hollywood studio (Rogue Pictures). Upcoming is his "old-style swords 'n' armor action epic" Centurion, which looks promising but doesn't yet have US distribution.

Read the rest at Cinematical

Discuss: Is Neil Marshall the right man to breathe life back into this sci-fi franchise?