By Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has spent the past few years in the sands of Arrakis for his two-film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel “Dune”.
Both movies ended up critical and commercial successes, so it came as little shock that Villeneuve intends to continue with plans for a film adaptation of Herbert’s “Dune: Messiah”.
Though only the second book in the series, the novel does close out the story of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and serves as a coda to the first novel. As a result it seems the right material for a ‘trilogy capper’.
This week though Villeneuve, who has previously made it clear ‘Messiah’ will be his last “Dune” film, tells Vanity Fair that not only is he not rushing the next film, he sees it as a quite separate work from the previous two:
“The thing is, first, it’s really important that people understand for me, it was really a diptych, it was two movies, a pair of movies that will be the adaptation of the first book.
That’s done, that’s finished. So, if I do a third one, which is in the writing process, I will say that, for me, it’s a different object. It’s not like a trilogy almost, it’s strange to say, but I really want to – if I go back there – to do something that feels different and has its own identity.
Let’s say for me, ‘Dune,’ in a way, is finished and ‘Dune: Messiah’ will be something new that I will approach with its own different cinematic philosophy.”
That fits in with the book which takes place twelve years later and takes a quite different tone. Villeneuve also adds that his final film could lay the ground work for someone else to continue the franchise if the studio wishes:
“I think that it would be a good idea for me to make sure that, in Messiah, there are the seeds in the project if someone wants to do something else afterwards, because they are beautiful books. They are more difficult to adapt. They become more and more esoteric. It’s a bit more tricky to adapt, but I’m not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else.”
However he won’t lock down what comes next as such, confirming that he is working on “Rendezvous with Rama,” “Cleopatra” and “Dune: Messiah and that “we’ll see what will be next”.
The post “Dune: Messiah” To Be Quite Different appeared first on Dark Horizons.
