As a cred shattering confession, I've never liked Frank Herbert's Dune. Or, rather, let me clarify: I've enjoyed the ideas of the Dune series far more than I've enjoyed Herbert's melodramatic, overly messianic and prosaically tedious books. I love the idea of giant sand worms, the prescience-granting spice melange, the blue eyed wraiths of the dessert. I just don't like the books.

In short, it's precisely the sort of book I like to see made into a film. But short of some guilty cult pleasure, I'm not terribly fond of Lynch's Dune either, which feels tacky, cheap, maudlin and confusing. I often wish the fantastic writer. director, composer, mime, psycho therapist and comic book writer Alejandro Jodorowsky had been given his chance at Dune instead of Lynch, as was originally intended.

I have no real idea how the Dune SciFi Channel television miniseries fared, although some seem to have liked it. But it looks like Hollywood might be getting a second shot at doing a compelling Dune movie. Byron Merritt, a member of the Herbert family, is claiming that a deal is very close with a studio executive who desperately wants the property.

Sure, it's just a rumor, but as someone who hated the Dune novel but paradoxically always wanted to see a great movie come along and fully embelish its wonderful world, I'm excited.

Wormsign? [CHUD]