Director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is almost complete, with the second half of the classic sci-fi novel hitting movie theaters this week. Dune: Part Two continues Paul Atreides’ journey of discovery on Arrakis, and explores his relationship with Chani and the Fremen as he seeks revenge against his family’s enemies.
But where does Dune go from there? After all, author Frank Herbert published six Dune novels (other authors, including son Brian Herbert, have released more than a dozen prequel and sequel books), and Villeneuve’s two-parter will only cover the first of those books. How many Dune movies can moviegoers expect?
Villeneuve appears to be taking the franchise on a film-by-film basis, and predicts he’ll ultimately make three Dune movies, adapting the original 1965 novel and Herbert’s 1969 follow-up, Dune Messiah.
“The thing I envision [is] the adaptation of two books, Dune and Dune Messiah,” Villeneuve said at a press junket in 2021, as reported by Nerdist. “We decided to split the first novel in two, so now we are at three movies. Those movies are very long to make. For my mental sanity, I decided to just dream about three movies.”
Dune Messiah would be a much more manageable adaptation for Villeneuve and crew. The original Dune novel weighs in at around 700 pages, while Messiah clocks in at a much leaner 300 (based on the currently available paperback editions of those books).
Villeneuve told Vanity Fair in 2022 that “hopefully, there will be another film after [Dune: Part Two.]” An adaptation of Dune Messiah, Villeneuve said, “would make total sense as a third movie because it completes Paul Atreides’s arc. I want to make part two as fast as possible, then I will wait a few years — until Timothée Chalamet gets a bit older — to do the final installment.”
Dune Messiah is set about 12 years after the events of the first Dune novel, but it seems unlikely that Villeneuve and his cast and crew would wait a decade or more to make a third film. Villeneuve does have other projects on his plate — adaptations of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama — but told Polygon he’s currently working on a screenplay for Messiah.
“Having just finished Part Two recently, I’m still digesting the experience,” Villeneuve said. “But the more time passes by the more I think I will have the desire to do it, if we have a strong screenplay. We are working on it right now and we are inspired. I think that we have something strong but when I’m going to do it — is it my next movie, or the movie after that, I cannot know. I will know when the screenplay will be finished.”
If Messiah does get made, it “should be the last Dune movie for me,” the director told Time. That’s definitely a good place to stop.
Whether the film franchise goes beyond three movies and two books is still up in the air (and up to Dune’s continued box office performance). Warner Bros. distributes the Dune movies — Legendary Pictures produces them — and the media conglomerate seems intent on extracting the most out of its intellectual properties. That’s evident in Warner Bros.’ plans to bring Dune to television too, with the release of Dune: Prophecy in 2024.
Dune: Part Two premieres in movie theaters on March 1.
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