Ability to set report defaults before running a report

We often have cases of needing to just tweak date settings for a given report but with the current architecture we have to wait for a report to finish before anything options are presented. This slows down the workflow and increases our system usage as we typically have to run a throw away query just to use a report.

Would it be possible to have a setting of don't run a report by default?

Currently this can be remedied by creating a handful of custom templates but that quickly turns into a bloated work around.