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Considering the box office success and critical acclaim of both Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, the fact that we’ll be getting a third Dune movie isn’t exactly surprising. Director Denis Villeneuve had been talking about wanting to do such a thing for a while before the official announcement. But he also implied that a third Dune movie may take a little while. This makes his most recent comments about Dune 3 a bit surprising, as he now indicates the third movie is being written right now, and that he is actively involved in getting it finished.
Denis Villeneuve had previously indicated that while he was excited to get to work on a third Dune movie, a story based on the second Dune novel, Dune: Messiah, he was looking to do something else for his next project potentially, and would get back to the world of Arrakis at some point down the road. However, speaking with Variety at the Toronto International Film Festival, the director stated that a script for Dune 3 is being worked on right now and that he would be leaving TIFF shortly to get back to work on it. Villeneuve said…
It’s in the works, yeah. That’s why I’m not staying here [at TIFF] very long.
While a statement like this doesn’t indicate that Dune 3 will be his next project, it makes that a strong possibility. Certainly, if Villeneuve was going to be working on something else next, like his announced Cleopatra project, active work on the script for Dune right now would be less important.
Of course, Dune: Part Two made over $700 million at the global box office and is currently the number four movie of the year worldwide. Numbers like that are the sort that would give WB a strong incentive to try and get Denis Villeneuve to get to work on another Dune movie sooner rather than later.
Denis Villeneuve had been open about his potential interest in making a third Dune movie for a while. Frank Herbert’s book, Dune: Messiah, completes the story of Paul Atreides making it a movie potentially worth making as it would complete a pretty nice trilogy for the director. Having said that, even Villeneuve had also said making such a movie might not be necessary. Herbert wrote the book in part as a response to Dune readers who he felt didn’t get the point of the first book, that Paul Atreides is not an aspirational hero, something Villeneuve felt he made very clear in the movies he made.
While Denis Villeneuve had said he wanted to take his time on a third Dune movie, there had already been evidence that he wasn’t going to get too much time. WB’s most recent release calendar, which dropped back in June, listed a “Denis Villeneuve Event Film” set for December 2026. It has been suspected that the movie could be Dune: Messiah, and if the script is of such importance that the co-writer and director need to get back to it, it could very well be because he’s planning to have that script in theaters in a little over two years.