Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as OutofFoucault23 and RockRockRockRocknRollHS in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, the pair digs deeper into a question plaguing all of mankind: can a studio interfering with the artistic process actually create positive results? What happens when a director’s cut is worse than the initial release? They put their heads together to come up with just about every single example (take “single” literally) of a movie saved by studio intervention.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column with a bunch of movie news in it. What, are you new here?

There’s a lot of talk about so-called “geek properties” and their appeal. Depending on who you believe, anything the nerdy class is into has a pass directly through Hollywood. With that said, Dune is struggling to make it off the ground. Paramount loses the rights to the Frank Herbert classic in Spring of 2011, and they find themselves without a director at the moment. It was all set with Pierre Morel, but apparently the Taken director has taken his talent elsewhere. All in all, it’s starting to look more and more like development of the 1980s version. It just needs to swing through three or four more directors before settling down to a nightmarish shoot. Look for news of its definitive death or complete resurrection soon. This is only one victim of the tangled dance of rights holders and studios, and you owe it to yourself to grumble in frustration/sigh from relief about this situation, and then read the great piece over at Deadline on the subject.

Because we’re all too broke to go to the theater or afford gold-plated rental services, FSR is offering free movies every Monday for the month of September. If this title doesn’t strike your fancy, head to Crackle.com to see what else they have for your viewing pleasure. The selection is great, and even better – the price is right. What do you need to get you excited about Krull? Cyborgs? Giant spaceships? Foretold, galaxy-ruling children? Liam Neeson playing a convict and inexplicably being in this movie at all? The answer should be an enthusiastic, “Why not! There’s nothing else to do.” Jokes aside, Krull is a ridiculous, fun, and ridiculously fun movie that almost needs to be seen to be believed. If you love it, you know you want to see it again. If you haven’t seen it, you owe it to yourself to stop reading my ramblings and go watch it.

From where I’m sitting, this internet meme of throwing together the same quote one hundred times in a single clip began with Sawyer (Josh Holloway) from Lost and his catch-phrase, “son of a bitch.” Now it’s branching out into cross-platform, cross-property clip mashing for phrases that permeate entire genres.

Chase Palmer may have zero feature film writing credits under his belt (at least, none that have made it to the big screen yet), but he’s about to get a big one. According to THR, he has been hired by Paramount Pictures to work on the script for the upcoming film Dune.

Pierre Morel has been tapped to make a new Dune for Paramount. Pressing questions and Max von Sydow references inside.

Since Peter Berg might possibly, maybe, could not be directing Dune, we’ve decided to throw a few hats into the ring. Who do you think could helm one of the hardest science fiction adaptations of all time?

It’s possible that you’ve seen this around the web, as a number of our friends and neighbors in the movie blogosphere have also picked it up. But just in case you missed it, I would like to share with you something very cool.

Peter Berg finally admits what we already knew — he is directing a Dune remake.