There could’ve been an infallible prophecy about this. That’s how inevitable it was. Last year, Denis Villeneuve said he only wanted to do one more Dune movie, making Dune Messiah to close out a trilogy. A wise man, he told Empire, “After that, the books become more… esoteric.”
A third Dune movie wasn’t official until now, in the wake of Dune 2 doing exceedingly well at the box office. And yet the announcement that he and Legendary are developing Dune Messiah was still so much of a foregone conclusion that it is tucked into a Deadline piece about an entirely different movie.
But it’s nice to have a level of certainty!
Dune Messiah takes place some years into Paul Atreides’ rule. As the book synopsis says:
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known—and feared—as the man christened Muad’Dib. As Emperor of the known universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremen, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne—and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.
And even as House Atreides begins to crumble around him from the machinations of his enemies, the true threat to Paul comes to his lover, Chani, and the unborn heir to his family’s dynasty…
There are political machinations, clones, children, deaths, and more politics. And philosophical musings, too.
It takes a while to make a sandworm saga, so Dune Messiah won’t be on screens any time soon.
