According to entertainment site Pajiba, not only is original director Peter Berg exiting the large Dune remake, but he was also secretly meeting up with Robert Patinson to discuss lead roles in the film.

Now that Pattinson is no longer interested in the project, Berg is looking to leave and Paramount is desperate for a new director and hoping to entice Neil Marshall, director of The Descent, or Neill Blomkamp, director of District 9, into taking over. Marshall is their number-one pick.

While we're taking this report with a giant heaping of salt, we have to say it makes sense and is getting us a little excited.

I think we're all in agreement that Neill Blomkamp would be gangbusters for this film, that's obvious. His passionate love of science fiction alone would at least mean he'd give his all at recreating a successful scifi film. But since Neil Marshall is the studio favorite, probably because he's cheaper, and Blomkamp has a lot of his own work he wants accomplished, let's talk Marshall.

First off Marshall can do more with less: he proved that with the tiny budget film The Descent. Since Paramount wants to make this film for an alleged $175 million, he probably has a few ideas. Also, Marshall is a fan of the genre. He loves aliens, plagues, Mad Max, monsters and conspiracies, and he will take care of the subject material or at least attempt to respect it. Even though Peter Berg's films are pretty to look at and very flashy, they're usually empty or devoid of feelings (witness Hancock). And finally, no matter how crazy and ridiculous Marshall's cult gem Doomsday got, it still wasn't Hitch or Hancock, sorry I hate both those movies equally.

[Via Cinematical]

The Marshall rumor comes from Bloody DIsgusting, which cites a "100% reliable source" for the buzz that the Doomsday and The Descent director is close to signing with 20th Century Fox to helm Predators, a movie that reportedly involves a team of commandos facing down a whole race of the dreadlocked aliens. Robert Rodriguez, who co-wrote the script, backed out of directing it last month but will still produce. The film, which may or may not feature a return-visit cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is due in July 2010.

Now, we may have gone a bit overboard in our enthusiasm for Doomsday, but then, so did Marshall in directing it. We hereby endorse him for the Predators gig. In fact, if he doesn't get the job, heads will roll. Then again, if his Predators is anything like Doomsday, plenty of heads will roll if he does get the job.

From the trailer it looks like we're dealing with the standard, "your hero is bonkers and no one believes her" problem, but in Descent 2 it appears as if Sarah Carter doesn't remember the crawlers, which would explain why they hell she would ever let anyone talk her into going back down in that hole to "find" her friends.

Neil Marshall's The Descent is by far and away one of my favorite horror flicks of the 00s. So please, I beg of you, handle this sequel in a respectful manner. I can accept the fact that perhaps somehow Juno managed to keep herself alive (it's a good twist), but I swear if they take any more liberties with the plot, I'm going to go nutso. I've already had to sacrifice the all-female cast for the sequel and I'm not ready to make any further compromises.

But director Jon Harris gets major points for paying homage to the jump-out-of-your-pants moment from the first by finding the girls' old camcorder. There is no US release date for this flick yet.

In this scene, the soldiers have fled to a little family farmhouse, whose owners are mysteriously missing. When they attempt to escape back to town in the family's truck, they get their first look at the creatures who've been stalking them in the woods. And it's not pretty - not at all. Though of course McKidd is looking pretty. And you'll be feeling pretty excellent after you check out this insane funny-scary movie. Even the twist ending is fantastic, and I normally hate twist endings. [Dog Soldiers via IMDB]

The new Descent sequel takes place right where the original left off: main character Sarah escapes the caves and makes her way to civilization where she is hospitalized. The local police convince her to show them where the cave is so they can search for survivors and the cave people, and of course things go wrong. Here's to Juno joining up with the cave gang, blinding herself with a pick, and leading her crew of albino cave people on a vengeance campaign against Sarah.

Empire Magazine spoke with MyAnna Buring (Sam) from the original Descent and she verified the cast's reunion.

"We're all back, all the girls have made an appearance" we were told by Buring. "I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you this, but we'll all appear in flashbacks. We had that video camera in the first film, remember, so [it's footage from that]. It was last week that we all rocked up on set in Ealing Studios and they'd mocked up these sets that looked like where we'd shot in the first film...so I went back to being Sam for a day".

While I'm ridiculously excited for the return of the ceiling crawling, raw-flesh-eating cave people, this idea is tragically flawed on two important counts. First, the original UK release of The Descent seemed to imply that Sarah was trapped in the caves forever and had gone completely insane, but the re-cut American ending had Sarah escaping, only to be accosted by the ghost of Juno. So if were going with the original ending, there's no way our main character could have gotten out off that ledge. And if we're following the American version, well then we have to deal with ghosts, to which I say no thanks. Second, it would be a cold day in hell before you ever got a survivor of that whole cave mess back underground and into the same cave they came from. Who cares if one of her buddies is stuck down there? I thought that was her intent to let the cheating, backstabbing frenemy die a slow and painful death in the dark? So nuts to the idea that Sarah would go back for Juno's sake. Plus it kind of ruins the whole character of Sarah because who wasn't standing up in their seat cheering when Sarah took a pick axe to Juno's knee leaving her wounded and behind. It completely negates my love for this character, especially if she's dumb enough to go back underground.

[Empire]

I mentioned the other day that Doomsday wasn't screened for critics, and it's easy to see why. I had to go see the first showing at our local theater, which was at noon — exactly 12 hours too early for this sort of movie. If you don't care about logic, or story, or characters, or pretty much anything except for seeing a hot woman dismember people in a tanktop — punctuated by some really, really over the top musical segments — then you'll love this film. It's not Shakespeare. It's not even Shakespeare In Love. But it's better than Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, the last film on this level that I saw.

Here's the plot in a nutshell: in April 2008, a deadly virus (The Reaper) breaks out in Glasgow and spreads like wildfire. The authorities decide, in a very 28 Weeks Later sequence, to quarantine the country and shoot down anybody who tries to get out. But then, 30 years later, a deeply dystopian and slummy London sparks a new outbreak of the virus (which feeds off poverty and overcrowding). The government sends a team up to Scotland to find out why some people survived the virus up there, led by Rhona Mitra's super-commando. Unfortunately, the last survivors of Scotland have fallen into total barbarism.

Doomsday won me over the moment I saw Rhona Mitra's removable eye. Rhona plays Eden Sinclair, who loses an eye as a small girl during the final evacuation of Scotland. When we see her as an adult, she has a prosthetic eye, with a tiny camera inside. The camera goes to a video screen (and digital recorder) in her wristwatch. So she can take her eye out and use it to look around corners, or make secret recordings of whatever she sees. It's really the only scifi-ish thing in the movie, but the first time we see it in action is (sorry) literally eye-popping.

And I'm happy to report that despite all director Neil Marshall (The Descent)'s talk about Mitra's character "keeping her femininity," she's a total hard-ass who doesn't give a shit about anything. We see plenty of scenes of her being a crazy bad-ass and not giving a shit, but just in case we miss it, Marshall has several characters look at her and say things like, "You don't give a shit, do you?" Right at the start of the movie, there's a great scene where her boss, played by Bob Hoskins, smokes with her and tells her that if she keeps going like this, she'll wind up one seriously fucked-up individual. Good to know, Bob. (The great joy of Hoskins these days is watching him slowly morph into Ed Asner.) She does cry once, right at the end, but it's brief and actually appropriate under the circumstances.

The movie is massively over the top from the first few minutes, with a blood spattering massacre at the new Great Wall of Scotland, and then a sequence where Mitra's character takes a bunch of random bad guys. (There's a naked woman in the bathtub, so of course she has a shotgun with her. Who wouldn't?) And it just gets crazier and crazier.

Inside Scotland, there are two groups of survivors. The first, in Glasgow, have turned to cannibalism and really excessive gothpunk fashion. If you don't take joy in watching the blond-mohawked leader of a cannibal tribe dance around to the Fine Young Cannibals, with two pole dancers in fishnets flanking him, then there's just no joy in you. I'm serious. The cannibal leader does a dance routine to Fine Young Cannibals. And then they roast a member of Mitra's team alive and eat him with their bare hands.

The other group of survivors, up north, is led by Malcolm McDowell. And here's where the movie just slides right off the rails. McDowell plays a scientist who was in Glasgow working on a cure for the plague when the country was closed off. And now somehow he's turned into the king of a castle, full of people in fake medieval garb. It's an entire Society for Creative Anachronism culture. And McDowell's scientist character recreates the Spanish inquisition and accuses Mitra of "sin" by having brought the outside world to his castle. (McDowell tries to trick his followers into thinking the rest of the world is dead — but doesn't seem that worried about showing off Mitra and her gang to his followers, even though they're evidence the rest of the world is fine.)

The final reel, when Mitra finds a mint-condition Bentley car in a fallout shelter, and manages to fill the tank with gas, is just bizarre. There's literally a moment where everybody involved seems to decide that if you've watched this far, you're in for the whole ride, and there's no point in trying to make sense any more. I don't know if I should spoil the end of the movie totally, but it succumbs to total dementia. I'm not an epidemiologist, but I'm a tad confused as to how Mitra's "cure" for the disease will work, and why she didn't just avail herself of it two hours earlier. And then Bob Hoskins develops the power of teleportation and becomes mildly psychic. And then Mitra makes some decisions that I can't fathom at all.

Oh, and did I mention that the leader of the cannibals is Malcolm McDowell's son? And that in the final showdown between Mitra's Bentley and the cannibals' ragtag collection of crappy cars and motorcycles, we hear a version of "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood? And the cannibal leader has a biohazard symbol tattooed on his back, and a leashed slave in full rubber bondage gear? And McDowell's medieval freaks have biohazard insignias — and biohazard stained glass?

Bottom line: Doomsday is a worthy addition to the Resident Evil canon of "butt-kicking babe in a ruined world" movies. Just don't ask any hard questions, like where the cannibals get all their pink hair dye and pristine latex bodysuits, and you'll enjoy the dancing, crashing, exploding, splattering, multiple decapitating goodness.

The Descent and Doomsday both focus on women venturing into perilous situations. Do you think it's important that the heroes in your films are women? Do you write women characters differently, or are they just heroes who happen to be women?

It's certainly not some kind of career plan to have my heroes be women, it's just turned out that way. I actually wrote the story for Doomsday several years before I made The Descent. It was one of 3 scripts I tried to get made in the wake of The Descent and it was the one that Rogue Pictures chose to back, so it's really just a coincidence that my new hero is also a woman and I saw no reason to change the character into a man just because of what I'd done previously.

I try to write women as authentically as possible. Above all things, no matter how tough and rugged I make the characters, they should never lose their femininity.

The thing that seems most intriguing to me about Doomsday is that it seems to straddle genre lines, including horror, scifi, medical thriller, etc. Do you think this is true? Are you consciously trying to blend genres?

I love to blend genres. Taking the best elements from different inspirations and throwing them all into the mix is what makes it fun. Besides, I think the lines between genres have often been blurred at best, and that's no bad thing.

Most post-apocalyptic movies nowadays feature monsters (28 days, I Am Legend, etc. ) Are you consciously trying to reclaim post-apocalyptic movies from the monster-movie genre?

Absolutely! It's like there's an unspoken rule in movies now that virus = zombies! Well that's not what post-apocalyptic movies are about for me. It should be about human survival, because the day the next big global pandemic arrives, there won't be any zombies running around, I can promise you that. This is real, terrifying stuff, just as real as nuclear war was when the last great post apocalyptic movies (like The Road Warrior) came out. And that's the kind of gritty, savage world I'm trying to revisit with this movie.

[ShockTillYOuDrop]

In Doomsday, the lethal Reaper virus nearly wipes out a small country (I think it's England, but the synopses don't make that clear), so the rest of the world walls off that country to keep the virus in. (As far as I can tell, the virus doesn't make you savage or mean, it just kills you, unless you're lucky.) Three decades pass, and the rest of the world remains virus-free. Until one day, the virus turns up in a major city. The authorities send Rhona Mitra into the quarantined country to try and retrieve a cure to the virus by any means necessary. But you just know that if two women enter this country, only one woman will leave. It's that sort of country. Doomsday, directed by Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) opens March 14 from Universal Pictures.

Doomsday, coming in May, is post-apocalyptic but not a zombie movie. People assume Doomsday features zombies because it's about a plague that wipes out most of the population, complains director Neil Marshall. But no. The plague liquefies your insides, but you don't ever come back to (un)life after that. People probably also jump to the zombie conclusion because Doomsday involves the infected Scotland being walled off, and everybody knows Scotland is full of zombies already. [Rabid Doll]