This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.
There are a lot of Dune books, but there may not be quite so many Dune movies. In an interview with Empire, director Denis Villeneuve says there’s a finite number of Dune films in his future: “If I succeed in making a trilogy, that would be the dream.”
Villeneuve tells Empire, “Dune Messiah was written in reaction to the fact that people perceived Paul Atreides as a hero… which is not what he wanted to do. My adaptation [of Dune] is closer to his idea that it’s actually a warning.”
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Whether that comes through in Dune Part One is debatable, but we still have Part Two for Villeneuve to get his point across. He’s described the second film as both “an action-packed, epic war movie” and “a much more emotional movie” than the first piece of his potential trilogy.
Should he get to make a Part Three, though, that would likely be the end of the series as we know it. “After that,” he says, “the books become more… esoteric.”
Interestingly, the Syfy Children of Dune miniseries also tackled Dune Messiah, for better or for worse. As Emmet Asher-Perrin wrote in a review that’s part of their Dune Reread, “The series cannot cover up how thin on the ground the plot of Dune Messiah truly is. Even ninety minutes is too long a time to stretch the story, and there are a few lengthy awkward montages in the first episode to make up for a lack of machinations and intrigue. Because Messiah is so caught up in philosophical meanderings about the nature of time and religion and leadership, there’s no real way to translate its majority to film.”
But if Villeneuve and his award-winning team get to tackle the tale, at least it’ll look cool.
Dune Part Two is delayed until March 15, 2024, so it’ll be a while before we hear more on this front.
