I heard about this earlier today.
These books have been on my "to read" list for as long as I can remember. About fifteen years ago, one of my dad's good friends offered to give me his 90's bantam spectra paperback copies of the first two books after he saw me thumbing through them on his shelf. I refused since I had such a massive backlog of other books lying around waiting to be read (still do). Hey, I did eventually finish the Dune series, so there's that.
Anyway, I can still remember when Shekhar Kapur was talking about making this into two movies. After seeing Elizabeth, a movie that's pretty entertaining despite being mostly scenes of people talking, I could totally see why. Then just a few years ago Roland Emmerich expressed interest, oddly appropriate since he would've gone from showing us the end of the world to showing us the end of the galaxy.
Haven't seen Person of Interest, but hearing this news just three days after seeing Interstellar makes me want to bump these books to the top of the reading pile.
I'm just glad the other stuff that's getting tv treatment are books I've either already read (3001, Childhood's End*) or already have lying around (Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books).
Oh, and speaking of the Dune books, I can't help but wonder if Syfy wants to bring the remainder of that series to tv as well. With James McAvoy's current star power it would make so much sense to get him back as God Emperor Leto, and Heretics/Chapterhouse have scenes that would give Game of Thrones a run for its money!
*Childhood's End was also in development as a movie several years ago with Kimberly Peirce attached to direct.