Dune’s Denis Villeneuve Breaks Down Plans for the Sequel and Beyond

io9’s tagline is “We come from the future” and immediately we’re making good on that proclamation. We come from a future by which you’ve simply seen Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation of Dune and because the credit roll, your first thought is “When is part two coming?” (Don’t fear, no spoilers right here.)

Since its inception, the director of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 conceived his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark sci-fi novel as a two-part saga. This first film, which opens October 22, even begins with the title “Dune: Part One” to let that is solely the start. So, when io9 sat down with different journalists to debate all issues Atreides, Arrakis, and extra with the director, we needed to ask the query everybody can be considering after watching the movie: “Just how quickly can we get part two in our eyeballs?”

“I would say that I would be fairly ready to go quite quickly now,” Villeneuve stated, earlier than clarifying additional. “Quickly in [terms of] a movie of that size. You still need to make sets and costumes, we are talking about months.” Villeneuve defined that he couldn’t cut up Herbert’s story in two with no sturdy sense of the place the continuation would go, a lot of the heavy lifting by way of story is already accomplished. “When you make a movie in two parts…when you do the first part, you have to know what you’re going to do in the second part,” he stated. “It has been mostly designed in a way that there’s a lot of elements that are [ready]…But if there’s enthusiasm and the movie is greenlit, sooner than later I will say that I will be ready to shoot 2022 for sure…I am ready to go and I would say that I would love to bring it to the screen as soon as possible.”

For Villeneuve although, there’s no actual rush—movie lives ceaselessly so he plans on taking his time with the sequel, assuming he will get to make it. “We know the first film I really had time to make sure that it was exactly the way I wanted it to be,” he stated. “And I would love to have the same feeling when I make the second part. So that would be the priority. My quality will be the priority.”

With Dune nonetheless a number of weeks away from launch, we received’t spoil precisely the place or how the primary movie ends. But it’s not shocking to say the primary movie could be very heavy on introducing the world of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), together with planets like Arrakis, villains just like the Harkonnen, and essentially the most precious substance within the galaxy, spice. “The tough task here was to introduce…the audience, to this world,” Villeneuve stated. “To the codes, to the cultures, the different families, the different planets. Now, once this is done, it becomes an insane playground. So it will allow me to go berserk and really create.” He defined that, although he didn’t need to decrease this movie, he imagines Dune Part One as an appetizer and Part Two because the fundamental course. “As much Dune Part One was by far my most exciting project ever Dune Part Two is already getting me more even more excited,” he stated.

Oh, and need to get extra excited? While the director swears he’s centered solely on releasing Dune Part One and, hopefully, getting Dune Part Two made, he would like to observe that up with Herbert’s sequel, Dune Messiah. “I’m going to be very honest. I envisioned the adaptation of two books, Dune and Dune Messiah,” Villeneuve stated. “I said okay, as a filmmaker [and] as a screenwriter I know how to do this. So we decided to split the first novel in two so now we are up to three movies. Those movies are very long to make. So for my mental sanity, I decided to just dream about three movies. After that, because I’m a big fan of all the novels, after that I’ll see where I am.”

“By the way, I’m not dreaming about Dune Messiah right now,” he clarified, “I’m focusing on launching Dune Part One, hoping there will be a part two, and that’s my main mission. And that’s enough. I mean, doing the first one was by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. And I think that we were able to bring it to life because me and the team just did that for two years and a half full time. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week we were dreaming about Dune Part One.”

Which brings us again to that first query. If Dune Part One is successful and Dune Part Two is rapidly greenlit, Villeneuve says he’ll be able to shoot in 2022. And whereas the primary movie took two and a half years of nonstop work, this “berserk” sequel already has a few of that legwork accomplished. It appears believable Paul Atreides may, doubtlessly, be again in theaters by 2024, if all goes to plan. Thankfully, Dune Part One is so densely filled with greatness, that ought to be simply sufficient time to digest all of it.

Dune opens in theaters, and on HBO Max, October 22.

Wondering the place our RSS feed went? You can decide the brand new up one right here.