After completing Dune: Part 2, director Denis Villeneuve isn’t ruling out the possibility of shooting the third film in the franchise.
Interview With The Hollywood Reporter
The filmmaker spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his future ambitions, including whether he hopes to continue making films for decades or retire at a particular point like Quentin Tarantino intends to do. (“It’s a great question,” Villeneuve responded.) In doing so, Villeneuve talked about getting the “once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring one of my oldest dreams to life” by adapting Dune, adding, “If things go well with Part Two, I could foresee the idea of maybe doing a third movie [based on] Dune Messiah. That would make sense to me.”
Dune Messiah is the second instalment in Frank Herbert’s original six-part novel series, published in 1969. The book and its sequel, 1976’s Children of Dune, were previously turned into a TV mini-series starring James McAvoy, named Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune in 2003. Dune Messiah, unlike Herbert’s first novel, has yet to be adapted for the big screen.
“After that… I think that I will make some other movies; let’s call them big movies regarding their ambition and scope. And later on, when I’m too tired to do that, I will go back to some smaller projects [Laughs],” said Villeneuve. “But for now, I have the energy to do this. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said that the biggest challenge for an artist is to last and to endure the test of time. But it’s not just the art one produces. Can an artist stay pertinent and relevant through society and not die out? Can you last? And as you rightly said, some of them are succeeding like [Martin] Scorsese and Ridley Scott. So it’s very difficult to do that. That will also be an ambition of mine, but we’ll see.”
For the time being, Villeneuve is focused on getting Dune: Part 2 off the ground, which was recently given the green light. In August, the director stated that he had begun penning the sequel to Dune, but that production is still a long way off. “There is still a lot of work to be done. It’d most likely be in the fall of 2022, and even that would be quick “The Hollywood Reporter quoted Villeneuve as saying.
Dune/Dune: Part 1 is now available to watch in theatres and on HBO Max. Dune: Part 2 is expected to be released in October 2023.
