Warner Bros. has released the first official trailer for Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune movie. The trailer follows photos of Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides in the film and an additional batch of photos revealing the rest of the film’s cast. Paul is the son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and is destined to become the reluctant messiah Muad’Dib. “The immediately appealing thing about Paul was the fact that in a story of such detail and scale and world-building, the protagonist is on an anti-hero’s-journey of sorts,” Chalamet said in an interview. “He thinks he’s going to be sort of a young general studying his father and his leadership of a fighting force before he comes of age, hopefully a decade later, or something like that.”
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Someone once said, “he who controls the spice controls when the Dune trailer drops.” We control the spice.
This is the EXCLUSIVE look at the #DuneMovie trailer. pic.twitter.com/38TcAtWnAp
— Twitter Movies (@TwitterMovies) September 9, 2020
In an interview in December, Oscar Isaac said the film will not be for the faint of heart. He noted that Villeneuve isn’t shying away from the uglier elements of the story. “I couldn’t imagine anyone more suited for the tone of the original Frank Herbert novels than Denis,” he said. “There are some things that are — for lack of a better word — nightmarish about what you see… There’s just this kind of brutalist element to it. It’s shocking. It’s scary. It’s very visceral.”
Warner Bros. describes Dune as “A mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive.”
Dune‘s cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Stephen Henderson, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem. Villeneuve directed the film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts based on Frank Herbert’s novel. The film is produced by Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo and Villeneuve. The executive producers are Tanya Lapointe, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert, Thomas Tull, Jon Spaihts, Richard P. Rubinstein, John Harrison, and Herbert W. Gains, with Kevin J. Anderson serving as creative consultant.
Dune opens in theaters on December 18, 2020.