While countless pundits claim that a third Dune film is very much in development, hearing what that progress sounds like from director Denis Villeneuve tells a very different story. In a new interview, Villeneuve doesn’t make the hypothetical Dune 3 sound like it’s happening anytime soon, and he also doesn’t even want us to think of it as “Dune 3.”
While speaking to Rebecca Ford for Vanity Fair, Villeneuve talked a bit about his feelings toward another Dune movie and clarified that he doesn’t view this as a film trilogy at all. “It’s important that people understand that for me, it was really a diptych,” Villeneuve says. “It was really a pair of movies that will be the adaptation of the first book. That's done and that's finished.”
Hardcore Dune readers already knew this, even if Dune: Part Two left out a few events from the first novel; notably, the birth of Paul’s (Timothée Chalamet) magical baby sister, Alia. However, the existence of an adult Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy), and a proactive ending to the film seems to suggest a sequel is coming. But will it actually happen?
Dune Messiah movie isn’t confirmed
As Denis Villeneuve makes clear in the new Vanity Fair interview, while he is working on a script for Dune Messiah, the movie is not a sure thing. He uses the word “if” twice to describe Dune Messiah, saying specifically, “Listen, if Dune Messiah happens, it will have been many years for me on Arrakis, and I would love to do something else.”
He has expressed this sentiment many times before, and while Legendary seemed to confirm that they have Villeneuve on the hook for two movies, including a possible adaptation of the nonfiction Annie Jacobsen book Nuclear War: A Scenario, it’s not clear that Dune Messiah is the movie that Villeneuve is planning to make next. “The thing I envy in my past is that before nobody cared about what I was doing next,” he joked. But then added that he was working on many things at once including a screenplay for an adaption of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Rendezvous with Rama, and a film about Cleopatra. But as of now he simply said, “We’ll see what will be next.”
Dune Messiah isn’t really part of a trilogy
Because the first two Villeneuve Dune movies only adapt the first book, a proposed third movie would adapt the second book, the 1969 Frank Herbert novel Dune Messiah. About half the length of the first book, Messiah picks up 12 years after the first novel and focuses on what happens to Paul, Chani, Irulan, Stilgar, and the rest of the new rulers of the universe after the Fremen have overtaken the galaxy in a massive holy bloodbath. A more overtly political novel than the first Dune, the events of Messiah also deal with the tragedy of Paul’s power of prescience, specifically the idea that he can become the instrument of his own downfall simply by seeing a future that he’s obligated to create. The book also features the return of slain warrior Duncan Idaho in the form of a ghola, a type of clone in the Dune mythos. (Which would necessitate a Jason Momoa return if the movie happened!)
In talking about adapting Messiah, Villeneuve told Vanity Fair, “If I do a third one, which is in the writing process, it's not like a trilogy. It's strange to say that, but if I go back there, it’s to do something that feels different and has its own identity.”
This makes a certain amount of sense. Not only is Dune Messiah set over a decade beyond the events of Dune, but it's also tonally and structurally a very unique novel, full of political intrigue, epic tragedy, and a strange hint at what comes next in a multigenerational epic. But strangely, Messiah is also a somewhat self-contained story, which makes Villeneuve’s statements all the more reasonable. Even if Messiah gets made into a movie, it will be its own thing, and overall this isn’t a trilogy. It’s one movie split into two, and another hypothetical movie that will feel more like a haunting epilogue.
Dune: Part Two is streaming on Max.
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