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DUNE Director Ready for Third Installment: ‘I Want to Go Back to Arrakis’

desert under clear blue sky during daytimeDUNE Director Ready for Third Installment: ‘I Want to Go Back to Arrakis’

By Movieguide® Contributor

Denis Villeneuve is sharing how DUNE: PART TWO builds up to the next movie in the franchise, DUNE: MESSIAH, rumored to release December 2026.

After DUNE: PART TWO, Villeneuve thought he’d need a break before diving back into the world of DUNE, but he was surprised when he found himself wanting to begin the next movie.

“I thought that I would want to go write a few films or do a couple of things before going back to DUNE: MESSIAH. But the images that kept coming back to my mind, the appetite is absolutely intact. That’s the biggest surprise,” he told The Wrap. “I still want to go back to Arrakis.”

About DUNE: PART TWO Villeneuve said, “There was something about trying to increase the momentum of the pacing of the film. I was feeling that ‘Part One’ was, by definition, a more contemplative film. It was a film where we were following a boy discovering a planet, a culture, and we were embracing that boy’s point of view. That boy was a victim of the event.”

“In PART TWO, that boy becomes an adult and becomes a leader. He takes his destiny into his own hands. And I felt that there was an opportunity to create something that will be more action-driven and something I had not done before, and that really excited me,” he explained. “That was my, let’s say, bucket list. And that was something that I feel we achieved.”

DUNE: PART TWO is a pretty dark movie, but Villeneuve balanced it with humor.

“It was important for me that the audience love Stilgar (Javier Bardem) — that they have empathy and they will want to get familiar [with] and embrace that character’s point of view,” he told The Wrap. “Not embrace, maybe, but get closer to him. In order to increase the empathy for this character, one way is humor, feeling that he has a candor that brings liberty.”

“It’s something that Javier beautifully embodied. What is nice is to see the balance between Stilgar’s candor and the way Paul Atreides, played by Timothée, perceives Stilgar as strange,” he said. “It’s about culture shock, which I think is always a good territory for humor.”

There’s more action in PART TWO, which demanded a lot of careful and technical planning.

“It required a lot of infrastructure and it created a lot of logistical problems because it’s not easy to create those machines in the desert,” the director shared. “More specifically, [cinematographer] Greig Fraser and I were obsessed with natural light and how to bring realism to the scene in order to create the scope of this machine, the size of this machine, that dance of those legs that are moving the machine forward.”

“To create those two massive movie shadows, we had to create the real legs that were moved by tractors,” he continued. “It was a big challenge. Details that could seem obvious at first can become quite tricky sometimes. But it brings the level of realism I was looking for.”

READ MORE: HOW DUNE DIRECTOR EXPLORES MORALS AND BETRAYAL IN MOVIES

“I was in love with the idea of bringing naturalism to the screen — as much as possible to feel close to nature. It meant that we had to prep like nothing I’ve done before,” the director shared. “The opening scenes, for instance, there’s a battle around a rock. That rock doesn’t exist.”

“It’s like 12 different locations in Jordan,” he said. “[Cinematographer] Greig Fraser was scanning the rocks with drones, and then he put that in the computer to know that if he wants the sun behind the actress when she smashes the head of the guy, the sun is going to be there on Nov. 3 at 9:45. It was a puzzle for the actors and for my first AD — but very rewarding in the camera.”

Though many parts were hard to achieve, the final product had a lot of clarity.

“Something that I’ve learned from the great directors is that clarity is very important in order to bring tension, and that it’s all about storytelling. For me, action can, if taken seriously, become quite cinematic and poetic and meaningful,” Villeneuve said. “Also, it’s said you can see the development of the character through an action scene.”

“This idea of the geography is super important, and it’s something that is embedded in the DNA of the screenplay — to make sure that the path that the character [takes] will inspire the camera work and should be very clear on the page,” he said. “But then there’s a step for me that is tremendously important, which is the storyboarding, where I’ll focus on the point of view and making sure that my mother knows exactly who is who and who is where and when. If you can create that, people don’t question. If they are not lost, then they can only focus on the tension.”

When Villeneuve finished PART TWO, he felt like he really accomplished what he wanted.

“I’d done it. I’d done an adaptation of ‘Dune,’” he recalled thinking. “And that is something that is an incredible privilege.”

“I’m very grateful to have the chance to have done it,” he said. “I think my biggest surprise about this is that I don’t want to run away from Arrakis. I’m still inspired to go back.”

But the director will only go back one more time. He told several sources that he would not make any more DUNE movies after DUNE: MESSIAH.

READ MORE: WILL THERE BE A FOURTH DUNE MOVIE? HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW…


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