Dune Could Become a Trilogy

The Academy Awards are just a couple of weeks away, and Dune managed to score ten nominations, including one for Best Picture. While fans wait to see if the movie takes home any big prizes, there has also been a lot of rumors pouring in about the recently-announced sequel, Dune: Part Two. This week, it was rumored that Black Widow star Florence Pugh could be joining the sequel, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘s Austin Butler is supposedly in talks to play the villain, Feyd-Rautha. Jon Spaihts is currently writing Dune: Part Two with director Denis Villeneuve and recently told The Playlist that it could turn into a trilogy. 

“Dune Messiah is the next book, and it’s one of three books with Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune, that covers the lives of the characters we meet in the first novel,” Spaihts explained. “Subsequently, there’s a giant leap in time and the series gets stranger and more epic as it carries on. But Dune Messiah picks up years after the close of Dune, and yes, Denis has talked seriously about making that film as well, as a conclusion of the trilogy. Dune Messiah is a very interesting book, which in some ways, deconstructs Dune and plays as a cautionary tale, even more than Dune does, about the dangers of blending religion and politics, the hazards of following charismatic leaders, and the dangerous struggle that’s always alive between the individual and institutions.”

During the interview, Spaihts was also asked what he wanted to make sure made it into the Dune screenplay as a fan of the books.

“Honestly, just the spirit of it, as I understood it. There was no singular event that felt more essential than the others. It is a very faithful adaptation and Denis who is as familiar with the book as I am, from the beginning set out to make a faithful rendition. So we had that in common. For me, it was just trying to convey the intricate detail and interplay of ideas from the book. At its best, the novel feels truly profound and renders a vivid world in which you can feel the research and the thinking that Frank Herbert put into the creation of his universe. And I wanted that depth and richness to surface in the screenplay, despite having a vastly smaller amount of real estate to work with.”

“I’m writing [Part Two] now, and I feel like I’m eight years old again,” Villeneuve told Total Film in an interview last year. “That’s very uncommon for me. It’s the first time I’ve experienced it where I’m watching one of my movies, and I have a moment of deep gratitude, of deep joy, and I say, ‘Thank you, life, for having allowed me to bring that to the screen.’ [laughs] I don’t know how other people will feel about it. But me? Denis Villeneuve when he was 14 years old? Thank you.” 

Dune: Part 2 is currently scheduled to be released on October 20, 2023.