Denis Villeneuve hopes to make third 'Dune' film earlier than expected

The filmmaker feels the encouragingly positive reception to the second film and the inspiration he got for continuing the story is giving him the impetus to complete the cinematic saga

Denis Villeneuve

Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve was considering taking a break from the Dune films after making the second one and working on something else before moving on to the third, Dune: Messiah, based on the Frank Herbert book, but he now feels that the encouragingly positive reception to the second film and the inspiration he got for continuing the story.

While doing a Q&A session with journalists at the Saturn Awards, Villeneuve spoke about getting his creative juices flowing once again for another 'Dune' instalment. "Chani's heart is broken; it's the beginning of the Holy War, which is where we left, so in a way, I'd say it's quite similar. 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. 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."

Villeneuve mentioned in his earlier interviews that Dune: Messiah will pick up 12 years after the second film, but it's not quite clear if the director behind acclaimed thrillers such as Prisoners and Incendies would deviate from the book to make room for any new cinema-friendly story developments to make it more accessible to the Herbert purists.

The first film won six awards at the 94th Academy Awards, aside from four nominations in the same. The second got five nominations at the 97th Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and two nominations at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Drama).

The Academy came under criticism from different corners, aside from Villeneuve and Zimmer, of course, when they deemed the score in Dune: Part 2 ineligible for the Oscars, citing the reuse of the music from the first film.

Zimmer gave a reasonable explanation to Variety as to why the above argument is unfair.

He said: "Listen, I am potentially confronted with an odd problem, which I think is quite interesting because of the amount of music that comes from the first movie into the second. We are not a normal sequel. We’re not like Pirates of the Caribbean, you have a theme for Jack Sparrow that comes again. This is different. Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two are one story, so it would make no sense for me to go and change the theme for the characters. I knew what the last note of the second one was before I wrote the first note of the first one, and I had the whole arc in my head of how to develop what we were going to do.

"There was the story that I was ineligible. What you’re saying you shouldn’t be allowed to use this form of storytelling. The Lord of the Rings used this form of storytelling as well. They had one book and one story which they needed because of its sheer size and weightiness, they needed to divide into three parts. We are dividing it into three parts, but we had to split the first book.

"Here’s the thing, I’m not going to win an Oscar for the second one if I won an Oscar for the first one, which I did, right? That’s not the point. My point is, be careful about these rules because what you’re doing is in the back of the studio’s mind, the Oscars are important, and you’re influencing the way you are saying whether we can create art or not. You’re saying you can’t do that because we won’t allow art to be nominated. We should have the freedom to find ways to create whatever comes to us. Denis made the right choice by splitting a heavy-duty book into two parts.

"Before I went on tour, everybody was saying to me, 'Oh, the audience’s attention span is terrible these days, and you have to make things short.” Well, that’s not true. The Pirates piece is 14 minutes long. I think The Dark Knight piece is 22 minutes and the audience is with us. And when Denis wants to go and do Dune in two long parts, the audience will stay with us. But part of that is you have to go and be able to develop your themes. You have to think of your themes and how you develop them over five hours. So, don’t tell me that makes me ineligible. It really isn’t about me, it’s about the movie."

Recently, a spin-off web series titled Dune: Prophecy streamed on HBO. It starred Emily Watson, Tabu, Mark Strong, and Olivia Williams, among others.

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