Update provided on Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune 3’
Denis Villeneuve has always been adamant that the only way a third Dune movie would happen was if the second lived up to the lofty expectations set by the first, and with Part Two having only gone and exceeded them, the prospect of a third visit to Arrakis looks increasingly inevitable.
Riding a wave of acclaim and having notched over $630 million and counting at the box office, it was only a matter of time before the gears started turning on Dune Messiah. After all, the two-part sci-fi spectacular has wowed audiences all over the world, and if the second chapter follows in the footsteps of its predecessor and troubles the major categories at the Academy Awards, then it’ll only reinforce Villeneuve’s Frank Herbert adaptation as one of cinema’s greatest-ever sci-fi stories.
However, the confirmation that a third Dune is in the works comes in fairly inauspicious circumstances, with production company Legendary announcing that it’ll be re-teaming with Villeneuve once again on an adaptation of Annie Jacobsen’s Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted book Nuclear War: A Scenario.
While the filmmaker mounting any new project is reason enough to get excited based on his filmography, it’s quietly noted as an addendum that Legendary is also in the earliest stages of development on Dune 3 alongside the Oscar-nominated director.
The recently-published Nuclear War: A Scenario dives into a scenario covering what could realistically happen on a global scale were the world to fall into such a conflict, with dozens of military and civilian experts who built the weapons, are aware of the response plans, and have a say in the decision-making process having been interviewed.
Should that project take precedence, then Dune Messiah could be a few years away, although it’s not unreasonable to assume Villeneuve would welcome a break from crafting such massive-scale intergalactic epics to focus his creative energies on a more grounded and prescient story.
Then again, Villeneuve is also attached to adapting another iconic sci-fi story in Rendezvous with Rama, while he’s also on board for a fresh stab at Cleopatra, as well as a secret third project of which details have yet to be revealed. Throw Nuclear War: A Scenario and Dune Messiah into the mix, and that’s five major productions currently lined up on the docket.
Given the success of Dune so far, though, Warner Bros could end up urging the filmmaker to push his trilogy-capper to the front of the queue, especially when Legendary is already involved in the franchise as one of its key backers.
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