YouTube/Warner Bros.
Dune: Half Two continues to be raking within the moolah on the field workplace, and deservedly so. However judging by my numerous feeds, followers are already swooning over the prospect of director Denis Villeneuve extending his imaginative and prescient right into a trilogy by adapting Frank Herbert’s 1969 sequel, Dune Messiah, for the following installment. Will there be a Dune: Half Three? Most indicators presently level to sure, with a few caveats. Precisely how quickly we’ll be seeing a return to Arrakis relies upon rather a lot on Villeneuve.
Selection confirmed that Legendary Photos is working with the director on creating Dune: Half Three, though it stays unclear from the wording of the plethora of stories gadgets whether or not the challenge has formally been greenlit. (“Improvement” can imply quite a lot of issues.) Naturally, the studio is raring, as are we: the movie is the largest hit of 2024 up to now, with international earnings of $630 million (though the hotly anticipated Deadpool and Wolverine this summer time may give it a run for its cash).
That affirmation despatched recent frissons of pleasure throughout the Web, though Villeneuve had been speaking in regards to the prospect way back to September 2021. These plans all the time relied on the success of Half Two, and that hurdle has clearly been cleared. By August 2023, the director was on file saying there have been “phrases on paper” for a 3rd movie. And we discovered simply final month that composer Hans Zimmer was already engaged on the rating for Dune: Half Three.
That stated, Villeneuve has but to decide to an precise launch date publicly, emphasizing his want to take a little bit break from the Dune franchise to work on one thing else. (Per Selection, Legendary has already tapped him to adapt Anne Jacobsen’s nonfiction guide, Nuclear Struggle: A State of affairs, however that challenge will seemingly come after Dune: Half Three.) He even hinted at one level that it is perhaps a good suggestion to let star Timothée Chalamet age a bit, given the 12-year hole within the novels.
And in February, Villeneuve informed The Instances UK that whereas he had almost completed a draft script (“barely an embryo”), he was not inclined to hurry issues: “I need to make it possible for if we return there a 3rd time that it will be price it, and that it will be make one thing even higher than Half Two.” That is a tall order, given the crucial raves which have accompanied the movie’s field workplace success. However we’re betting Villeneuve can pull it off… in his personal good time.
