Variety reports that Peter Berg ("Friday Night Lights") will direct a new bigscreen adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel "Dune." "Dune" has already been adapted into a 1984 David Lynch film and a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries starring William Hurt. Paramount Pictures will distribute the project. The film will be produced by Kevin Misher, who has recently acquired the rights from the Herbert estate.

The novel, originally published in 1965, told of "a remote desert planet Arrakis which produces the interstellar empire's sole source of the spice Melange -- used for distant space travel. An empirewide power struggle ensues over the control of the spice."

The project is out to screenwriters right now, with the studio hoping for someone to do a faithful adaptation.