Long said to be called Dune Messiah, Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi sequel will now be called Dune: Part Three. Also: less IMAX than previously thought.
Update 9th July 2025: As Denis Villeneuve and his team gear up to turn the Dune film saga into a trilogy, a couple of news snippets emerge from the production.
First, the title. For many months, it’s been said that the next (and Villeneuve’s final) chapter will be called Dune Messiah, echoing the title of author Frank Herbert’s second book in the series. Instead, Variety reports that the film will be called Dune: Part Three.
It’s a less evocative title, but a logical one. It makes its aim of directly continuing Paul Atreides’ story more plain, and means the Blu-ray will look more uniform sitting next to the other two films on our shelves. There might also be a bit of expectation management here; Dune Messiah is a decidedly trippy novel in places, and it may be that he and co-writer Jon Spaihts will side-step some of that weirdness in their adaptation.
In other Dune: Part Three news, it sounds as though IMAX boss Richard Gelfond’s earlier claims were overstated. He went on TV and said that Villeneuve is “filming the whole thing” with IMAX cameras. According to Variety’s sources, that isn’t true – only parts of it will be shot in the embiggened format, in much the same way that key sequences in Dune parts one and two were.
Filming on Dune: Part Three got underway on the 7th July in Budapest, with Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh and Jason Momoa among the stars reprising their roles. Its release date is currently set for the 18th December 2025.
Our original story follows…
Original story 8th July 2025: If reports are correct, director Denis Villeneuve is currently filming his sci-fi sequel Dune Messiah, with its release set for December 2026.
Meanwhile, if recent comments from IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond are accurate, then the film could look quite different from the previous two chapters, released in 2021 and 2024.
Speaking on the Lord Business-approved CNBC show Squawk On The Street (see below) Gelfond talked about the success of his large-format presentation business, and the subject of Denis Villeneuve came up.
“He’s making the next Dune with IMAX cameras,” Gelfond said. “He’s filming the whole thing.”
The previous Dune movies had some spectacular IMAX sequences, but they weren’t presented entirely in IMAX’s tall aspect ratio, nor were they shot on film. Instead, they used IMAX-approved digital cameras, with the footage then printed onto film to add a layer of grain. (Because most cinemas are digital these days, the film then had to be scanned into a computer again. It was quite a process.)
Gelfond appears to be hinting that Villeneuve and his team will be shot natively on film using IMAX’s 70mm cameras – something Christopher Nolan is currently doing on his current project, The Odyssey.
Speaking at Cannes in May, Gelfond revealed that his company had developed a new generation of lighter, quieter IMAX cameras following a conversation with Nolan – and the tech proved to be so successful that the filmmaker decided to use it exclusively on his currently-in-production mythological epic.
Is Villeneuve adopting the same approach for Dune Messiah? Gizmondo contacted IMAX for comment on what Gelfond said, and the company confirmed that the director will “shoot on Messiah with IMAX cameras” but couldn’t say for definite whether it would be entirely on film.
Gelfond sounds hopeful that Villeneuve will continue to use his company’s format in the future, however, including the filmmaker’s next project: James Bond.
“We haven’t started talking yet, but I’m praying that’s the case with Bond,” he said.
More on Dune Messiah – and its potential use of massive film stock – as it comes in.
