Denis Villeneuve would make a third Dune movie, but that’s it

Denis Villeneuve getting a chance to make his Dune sequel seemed like a minor miracle, what with the first one’s box office taking a hit from its simultaneous HBO Max release and/or the ongoing spread of COVID-19, but now that the second one is coming out… even if it’s not going to be as soon as we thought (thank the AMPTP and its apparent hatred of movies for the delay)… Villeneuve is tentatively looking toward the future.

Speaking with Empire as part of a poorly timed cover story extravaganza that dropped immediately after Warner Bros. Discovery decided to delay the movie into next year, Villeneuve teased that there are “words on paper” for a potential Dune: Part 3—but that’s as far as he’s willing to go. Villeneuve said, “If I succeed in making a trilogy, that would be the dream,” with the third movie focusing on Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert’s second Dune novel. However, Villeneuve only seems to be interested in making a trilogy and not continuing on with Herbert’s other books (or the ones published by his son after his death), explaining that everything after Dune Messiah “becomes more… esoteric.” (Which, without spoiling anything, is one way of putting it.)

In the Empire piece, Villeneuve explains that Messiah was written to explicitly underline that the stuff that Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet in the movies) does in the first book isn’t necessarily good—with the director noting that he has tried to make that a little more overt in his adaptation, in case you were wondering if you were supposed to pick up on the fact that the movies are about a white guy co-opting the religion of an indigenous people in order to sway them to his cause (which is to defend his “right” to rule a planet that was given to him by other white people).

Dune: Part Two is coming to theaters on March 15, 2024, after being delayed out of its original November 3 release date.