Summary
- Denis Villeneuve was moved by the response to Dune: Part Two, prompting a quicker start on the third film.
- The director shared that he “felt an appetite and a desire to see more and a responsibility to finish” the Dune story.
- Villeneuve previously said that he wanted to take on another project and it could take years before he worked on Dune 3.
Denis Villeneuve gave updates about his schedule that would surely make Dune fans happy. The filmmaker is returning to Arrakis sooner than expected.
Villeneuve is a talented Canadian filmmaker known for his visually stunning and thought-provoking epic science fiction movies like Arrival (2016) and Dune movies. He took the challenge of adapting Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune despite many finding the narrative “unfilmable” due to its dense story. His first Dune movie was a massive hit and it won six Oscars out of 10 nominations. Dune: Part Two, released in 2024, was also a critical and commercial success. It seems that Villeneuve is eager to move on from the franchise because he said the third would be his last and he is already on it.
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Villeneuve spoke about the third Dune film in a recent interview. He is down to starting the production for the next movie. “I was expecting to do something else before, but frankly, that’s the inspiration that came to my mind as I took a break this summer and was going back and finishing the story,” he said at the Saturn Awards, per Collider. “I was really moved by the way Part Two was received by cinephiles around the world, and I felt an appetite and a desire to see more and a responsibility to finish that story.” Dune 3 follows Dune: Messiah. Villeneuve previously said that he wanted to work on another project before it and even suggested that it would take years before he worked on it. “Listen, if Dune: Messiah happens, it will have been many years for me on Arrakis, and I would love to do something else,” Villeneuve told Vanity Fair in September 2024.
In a separate interview with TheWrap, Villeneuve admitted that he was satisfied with his work after the second Dune film was released. It was an achievement for him and he even told himself, “I’d done it. I’d done an adaptation of Dune.” He considered it an “incredible privilege,” but he was surprised that he wasn’t ready to leave the story yet. “I’m still inspired to go back. That’s the thing that I was the most surprised by. I felt that after Part Two, I would need a break. I thought that I would want to go write a few films or do a couple of things before going back to Dune: Messiah,” he continued. “But the images that kept coming back to my mind, the appetite is absolutely intact. That’s the biggest surprise. I still want to go back to Arrakis.” However, he said that the third movie would be his last because pushing it further “would become unhealthy.”
The recent update about Dune 3 is great news for fans because that means they will not wait several years to see the third film. It’s also a good move for Villeneuve, who wants to exit from the franchise after the next movie because he can do so gracefully and move on from his other sci-fi projects without looking back since he can consider Dune as a close chapter.
Villeneuve previously said that Anya Taylor-Joy, who made a brief appearance in Dune: Part Two as Paul Atreides’ (Timothée Chalamet) sister Alia Atreides, would have a bigger role in Messiah. The director was impressed with Taylor-Joy’s talent even admitting that she was his only choice to play Alia in the film.
Dune: Messiah will hit theaters on December 18, 2026.
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Source: Collider