Suggesting the sort of potential bloat that inevitably leads to people floating around a ballroom, ripping out people’s heart plugs and screaming about “he who controls the spice,” director Denis Villeneuve has announced that his upcoming Dune movie is expanding into at least a second film. Speaking in front of a crowd up in Montreal this week, Villeneuve explained that we won’t be seeing either of these Dune movies any time soon, either, saying, “Dune will probably take two years to make. The goal is to make two films, maybe more.”
Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel has been a frequent challenge for directors over the years; David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky both struggled mightily to capture all the weird nuances and history of Herbert’s universe of psychic messiahs, subtle political maneuvering, and massive, LSD-excreting dick worms. Villeneuve has talked in the past about his own efforts to distill Dune down into marketable entertainment; the Blade Runner 2049 director previously referred to his film(s) as his attempts to make “Star Wars for adults.”