Despite not being officially greenlit yet, Denis Villeneuve has been hard at work on the script on a third Dune film. He has offered a tantalising update on it, too.
Dune Part II is hitting cinemas this Friday and the cast and crew of the mammoth blockbuster have been hard at work promoting the film all over the world.
The latest update comes from the film’s New York premiere where The Hollywood Reporter asked director Denis Villeneuve about the state of the third Dune film, based on Frank Herbert’s Dune: Messiah.
“I agreed to make Part One and Part Two back to back and now I think I will need to digest this experience and I want to come back with a strong screenplay,” he explained. “It’s almost done but it needs work, a bit, now.”
Warner Bros., the studio behind Part I and II, hasn’t officially greenlit a third instalment in the franchise, but considering how much Villeneuve has spoken about the third film, it seems like that the studio will indeed go ahead with a third film.
Villeneuve himself has said, if a third film was to be greenlit, that would be it for him. “Dune Messiah should be the last Dune movie for me,” Villeneuve said recently in an interview with Time magazine.
Dune Part II, which opens in cinemas this Friday, is projected to make loads of cash in its opening weekend. Deadline projects that the sequel will make roughly $65 million in its first weekend. The first Dune opened to $41 million, but that was during the COVID-19 pandemic while the film also released on Max on the same day.
Villeneuve also recently said he’s not a fan of dialogue and would love to make the third Dune film without any, whatsoever. We highly doubt that’s going to happen, but who knows? As our very own Ryan Lambie put it in his glowing review, Dune Part II is “a remarkable achievement” and “2024’s first truly great multiplex film”.
More on Dune Messiah as we hear it. Dune Part II is in cinemas on 1st March.
