Will ‘Dune: Part Three’ do a ‘Return of the King’ and sweep the Oscars?
One of the biggest movie events of 2026 will take place on December 18th, when, after captivating audiences and critics alike with his first two instalments, Denis Villeneuve will be returning with his final adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling sci-fi universe, Dune: Part Three.
Releasing two years after Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) defeated House Harkonnen and the Emperor, this third movie promises to be the “epic conclusion” to one of the most riveting film series of recent years.
With the trailer for Dune: Part Three dropping, fans of the franchise are excited about the future, but we’re not interested in that. Alright, we are, it’s hard not to be when the Dune series has done just about everything right up to this point. We’re also interested in the past, though, as the success of Dune reminds us of another literary trilogy that set the world on fire some two decades earlier.
Villeneuve’s Dune movies have a lot in common with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Both spawned from books that many considered to be unfilmable, but went on to become gigantic critical and commercial successes. Both exist in vast worlds with deep lore and dozens and dozens of characters, and both draw on real-life folklore and cultures. Neither series was particularly kind to women, either, but that’s a story for another time.
These comparisons are good news for Dune: Part Three. The final instalment of Jackson’s trilogy, The Return of the King, not only made over $1billion at the box office, but it cleaned up at the Oscars, and I mean cleaned up. The movie was nominated in 11 different categories, including ‘Best Picture’, and won in every single one of them. It holds the record for the most Oscars awarded to a single movie (alongside Titanic and Ben-Hur), as well as the biggest sweep in Academy history. So, the question remains: will Dune: Part Three do the same?
The first two Dune movies have set a strong precedent when it comes to the little gold statues, with both Dune and Dune: Part Two nominated for ‘Best Picture’, as were The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Both series have also followed a similar pattern when it comes to nominations; the second instalments received roughly half the nominations of the first.
These nods have come in a variety of categories, from sound to cinematography to music. Interestingly, neither series has done particularly well on the acting front, with the sole nomination across all five films being for Ian McKellen in Fellowship.
There is one crucial difference that might work against Dune, which is the structure of its novels. The Lord of the Rings was split firmly into three distinct stories, which Jackson mostly followed, and as for Dune, Villeneuve decided to split the first book in half, seemingly intending to adapt the entire second book, Dune Messiah, into one movie. The first two Dune movies are so good because they took time to tell the novel’s intricate story, as trying to cram an entire Frank Herbert book into one movie feels like a bad idea, something David Lynch found out.
If I had to make a prediction right now, I would say that Dune: Part Three is not going to pull off a Return of the King. I think it’s too big an ask to wrap up the existing story in one film. However, given its current track record, if any franchise is going to take Jackson’s crown, it’s probably this one.
