With a script on the go, great early box office numbers in the can and key financiers up for it, a third Dune film – Dune: Messiah – is looking like a certainty.
Dune: Part Two is in cinemas right now and happily, everything looks to be going well for Denis Villeneuve’s big-budget slice of sci-fi cinema. The film is getting great reviews (here’s ours) and making plenty of cash at the box office too.
Our own Ryan Lambie called it ‘2024’s first truly great multiplex film’ and critics tend to be in agreement that the ever-reliant Villeneuve has done the business again.
Those good vibes seem to have extended as far as Legendary Entertainment, the film’s production company and co-financier. The company’s CEO, Josh Grode was asked this week about a third Dune film and he expressed confidence that it would happen, stating:
“We have to have all creative stakeholders aligned and support the vision. I think everybody is very excited and really enjoying this moment and if Denis [Villeneuve] gets the script right and he feels that he can deliver another experience on par with what we’ve just completed then I don’t see why not.”
As far as the script goes, we’ve known since last summer that Villeneuve has been penning the third film and we’ve heard of late that he’s almost done. Given that Dune: Part Two has pulled in $178.5 million so far, the biggest opening of 2024, everybody seems to be keen for the filmmaker to close out his trilogy with Dune: Messiah.
This will presumably be based on Frank Herbert’s slimmer tome, which is set a decade after the original book.
Dune seems to be in Villeneuve’s immediate future then, although with the next novel featuring a substantial time gap, there’s always the small chance he might decide to focus on another project first. We know he has a project brewing based on ‘space and time’ which has a script penned by Eric Roth (catch our recent podcast interview with Roth here) and then there’s Villeneuve’s planned Cleopatra movie too.
Still, Messiah probably is next in line but when we hear an official confirmation, we’ll let you know.
