One of the biggest movies of the year for us here at FTN is Denis Villeneuve’s Dune – our man Paddy has seen it already and swears it’s an utter triumphance (review coming soon) – we’re already hoping that it won’t be a one and done, ends in the middle of a story kind of deal.
And, it seems, Warner Bros are already pondering the same thing and trying to work out how they’ll get the sequels to the fans.
We know that Dune, like so many other movies this year, is getting a streaming and cinematic release simultaneously, so all eyes are on how well it will perform – although its international performance so far has been very impressive, so it’s all looking good.
Villeneuve has previously said he believed Warners had doomed Dune by its duel release, saying “Dune’ won’t have the chance to perform financially in order to be viable and piracy will ultimately triumph. Warner Bros. might just have killed the ‘Dune’ franchise”. But is he right?
According to new rumours, Warners are impressed with the buzz about the movie on HBO Max and, should the numbers on there perform as expected, then we will be getting a sequel in the future… which is great news for fans of Frank Herbert’s epic novels as well as fans of cinema.
Star Timothée Chamalet has said that making a sequel would be “the dream”.
But what would a sequel be and how long until it would be ready to go?
The movie opens with the legend: Dune Part One, leaving the audience under no illusions about this movie’s planned franchise beginnings, and it seems that, while initially disillusioned with the movie’s release strategy, Villeneuve is already confident he can be ready to begin the sequel pretty quickly: “I would say that I would be fairly ready to go quite quickly now.
“Quickly in [terms of] a movie of that size,” he clarifies. “You still need to make sets and costumes, we are talking about months. When you make a movie in two parts… when you do the first part, you have to know what you’re going to do in the second part. It has been mostly designed in a way that there’s a lot of elements that are [ready]… But if there’s enthusiasm and the movie is greenlit, sooner than later I will say that I will be ready to shoot 2022 for sure… I am ready to go and I would say that I would love to bring it to the screen as soon as possible.”
“The tough task here was to introduce the audience to this world,” Villeneuve goes on.
“To the codes, to the cultures, the different families, the different planets. Now, once this is done, it becomes an insane playground. So it will allow me to go berserk and really create.” He explained that, though he didn’t want to minimize this film, he imagines Dune Part One as an appetizer and Part Two as the main course. As much Dune Part One was by far my most exciting project ever Dune Part Two is already getting me more even more excited.”
However, it seems that when he originally conceptualised Dune, he was thinking not two, but four movies based on Herbert’s first two books, Dune and Dune Messiah: “I envisioned the adaptation of two books, Dune and Dune Messiah,” Villeneuve adds.
“I said okay, as a filmmaker [and] as a screenwriter I know how to do this. So we decided to split the first novel in two so now we are up to three movies. Those movies are very long to make. So for my mental sanity, I decided to just dream about three movies. After that, because I’m a big fan of all the novels, after that I’ll see where I am.”
“[But] I’m not dreaming about Dune Messiah right now,” he goes on “I’m focusing on launching Dune Part One, hoping there will be a part two, and that’s my main mission. And that’s enough. I mean, doing the first one was by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. And I think that we were able to bring it to life because me and the team just did that for two years and a half full time. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week we were dreaming about Dune Part One.”
On top of this, while we’ve heard very little lately, we assume the HBO Max series, Dune: The Sisterhood (here) is still going ahead with Villeneuve directing some episodes and, should this all go well, the director believes Dune Part Two could hit cinemas as soon as 2024.
This man is not afraid of a bit of graft!
Below, check out the behind the scenes short, Celestial Sounds, based on Hans Zimmer’s score for Dune:
Dune opens in theaters, and on HBO Max, October 22.
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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