After four years in development, the proposed new big-screen version of Dune isn’t going to happen.

According to Deadline, the rights to the Frank Herbert saga will expire without a new film going into production. Paramount Pictures has decided to cut its losses and give up on a new big-screen version of the award-winning novel.

Richard P. Rubinstein, who owns the film rights to Dune, said, “Paramount’s option has expired and we couldn’t reach an agreement. I’m going to look at my options, and whether I wind up taking the script we developed in turnaround, or start over, I’m not sure yet.”

The reason why Paramount didn’t want to pick up the option and keep working at it? Money, says Rubinstein, who added, “Sure, it’s frustrating, how long this has taken, but most of what I’ve done that worked out well over the years, like the miniseries The Stand, took a long time.”

Meanwhile, according to Vulture, Dune isn’t the only big-budget sci-fi movie that is running into trouble at Paramount. The studio may also scrap another long-in-development project, an adaptation of Max Brooks’ excellent zombie apocalypse novel World War Z, if it can’t find an investing partner to pony up some of the $125 million price tag. That’s after star/producer Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster have already agreed to make it a PG-13 picture. This all comes on the heels of a different studio, Universal, dropping Guillermo del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness because he wouldn’t budge from an R rating for that $150 million epic.