Screenwriter Eric Roth has written an adaptation of the sci-fi short story called I Am Waiting For You, reportedly for Dune director Denis Villeneuve.
Having made what is currently the highest grossing film of 2024, Dune: Part Two, the logical question is: what does director Denis Villeneuve make next? There’s been talk about turning his Dune saga into a trilogy with Dune: Messiah, but the filmmaker has previously said “it would be healthy” to make something slightly different before he returns to Arrakis.
Among the potential films we know about there’s his long-discussed Cleopatra epic; an adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s sci-fi novel Rendezvous With Rama, an adaptation of the non-fiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario.
Then there’s a slightly more mysterious sci-fi film said to be “about space and time”, written by Eric Roth, who also wrote the adapted screenplay of Rendezvous With Rama. When Roth talked about the former screenplay last November, he said “The title will have to remain a dark star for now.”
More recently, however, Roth has seemingly confirmed what that screenplay actually is: an adaptation of a short story called I Am Waiting For You, written by Korean author Bo-Young Kim.
Roth revealed this on Greg Fitzsimmons’ Fitdog Radio podcast in April (as picked up more recently by World of Reel). In it, he described it as a “love story set in the future”:
“The setup is in the future, two people want to get married and they want to meet on Earth to do it and there’s some space travel and he’s coming from Place X and she’s coming from another place, and they start getting delayed. He’s delayed and then she’s delayed and if you delay in space, all of a sudden eight months is going to pass. She’s getting older while she’s trying to get to Earth so it’s called I’m Waiting For You, and it’s pretty profound.”
Roth doesn’t mention Villeneuve’s name in the April podcast, but it certainly lines up with the more teasing descriptions of the film Roth wrote for the Canadian filmmaker.
“I just wrote a movie for Denis Villeneuve,” Roth said on the Script Apart podcast in November 2023. “We’ll see what ends up happening with it, but it’s about space and time, and it’s very lonely. It’s certainly about eternity.”
Villeneuve therefore has four projects to choose from. Will he go for one of these, or will Warner Bros convince him to make Dune: Messiah next after all? We’ll let you know as we learn more.
