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This article contains potential spoilers for Dune 4 and Dune 5.
By this point, Robert Pattinson has firmly established himself as one of our great weirdo actors. In the past 15 years, he’s played a shut-in billionaire in Cosmopolis, a sinister and hallucinating wickie in The Lighthouse, an emo Dark Knight detective in The Batman, a croaking magical bird in The Boy and the Heron, and most recently an army of twitchy clones in Mickey 17.
But it may be with Denis Villeneuve that Pattinson gets to do the greatest onscreen weirdo of all time. It appears that Pattinson is looking to join the cast of Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune: Messiah, an adaptation of the second book in Frank Herbert‘s Dune series. This would also cast him alongside Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Zendaya as Chani, and Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan.
A more contained story than its predecessors, Dune: Messiah takes place 12 years after the original Dune, picking up with Paul as Emperor of the known universe and leader of a fanatical Freman Jihad cult. As he and Chani struggle to sire an heir, Paul becomes the target of a conspiracy of powerful members, which includes familiar faces such as Irulan and Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling), as well as some interesting newcomers: the fish-like Guild Navigator Edric, the Tleilaxu agent Bijaz, and the Face Dancer Scytale.
Given that Edric is a mutant who spends his time in a giant tank and Bijaz is a dwarf, Scytale seems like the most likely part for Pattinson. As seen in the HBO series Dune: Prophecy, Face-dancers are shape-shifters, who take on the features of anyone. Scytale uses that ability to infiltrate Paul’s inner circle and to threaten the family in a way he could never imagine.
Obviously, Pattinson’s range and gift for playing oddballs would make him an ideal Scytale, the natural evolution past Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen as an arch-nemesis for Muad’Dib. But Villeneuve has already shown a willingness to move beyond the confines of a particular book with his adaptations. Dune: Part Two features several pulls from later entries in the series, most notably Anya Taylor-Joy appearing in a vision as the adult Alia Atreides, Paul’s little sister who isn’t even born yet in that movie (although she is a prominent teenage character in the novel Dune: Messiah).
In other words… if Villeneuve decides to do something similar and have a well-known actor play a cameoing character from a later book, Pattinson could be playing one of the most interesting characters in Herbert’s twisted Dune lore. He could be playing a vision of Paul’s grown son Leto II, one of the weirdest characters in Dune. At this point, if you really don’t want to be spoiled about plot developments that would occur in any potential Dune 4, 5, or 6, please stop reading.
Still with us? So… during the events of Dune: Messiah, Paul and Chani conceive a pair of twins, naming the boy Leto II and the girl Ghanima. The twins then become the focus of Children of Dune, which takes place just over 10 years later. Late in the book, Leto deliberately consumes an excessive amount of the Water of Life and takes refuge among a school of sandworms in their laravel form. He essentially fuses with them, as well. The combination makes Leto into something powerful, but no longer human, allowing him to stop the various threats and secure his version of humanity’s better future: what he calls the Golden Path.
The next book God Emperor of Dune opens 3500 years later, and yet Leto II still lives, but by this point, he’s become the Tyrant Worm, an all-powerful sandworm human monstrosity who, despite his incredible strength, influence, and nigh immortality, still hasn’t achieved his plans for humanity.
From Herbert’s perspective, Leto II is the ultimate perversion of the power politics pursued by the various characters, the twisting of humanity for the sake of safety and control. But from a modern moviegoing audience, Leto II would be the perfect chance for Pattinson to get as wacky as possible. As an actor who’s spent close to 20 years running away from his natural Twilight good looks, and toward the most batshit characters he can find, it would be the challenge. He could play a literal worm-monster with a god complex. Who needs the Batman now?
Dune: Messiah releases December 2026.
The post Dune 3: Robert Pattinson Could Be Getting His Ultimate Weirdo Role appeared first on Den of Geek.
