Does anyone recall the film Peter Berg was due to direct before he made the choice–in hindsight, perhaps not a bad decision–to direct Universal’s “Battleship?

It was Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel “Dune?”

A novel, by the way, that since his death seemed to have spawned more sequels than when he was alive.

Despite the few attempts to translate the property to the big screen–David Lynch’s some what steampunkish version of the novel was the first–and only version–to make it to theaters (though this was after Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s version was abandoned due to projected cost overuns), though according to Box Office Mojo it earned $30 million domestically, on a $40 million dollar budget.

The SciFi Channel, now known as SyFy (for reasons only their marketing department will ever know), created their own versions of  Herbert’s “Dune,” as well as “Children of Dune.” I actually perferred “Children of Dune” to “Dune,” though both suffered from a lack of both budget and scale to create the worlds that Frank Herbert’s books required.

And would Berg have done “Dune” justice?  It’s hard to tell, if only because he had never done anything on that scale before.  That being said, from what I hear about “Battleship,” perhaps this is a question best left unanswered.