Denis Villeneuve seems very tired. That’s the first takeaway from his recent interview on Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast: the man needs a nap. You can hardly blame him for being ready to step away from Arrakis after Dune Messiah, which he has made clear will be his third and final Dune film. But Villeneuve’s eventual departure might not mean the end of moviegoers’ time in the Duniverse. The writer-director is leaving the door open for some other ambitious director to step through:
I think that it would be a good idea for me to make sure that, in Messiah, there are the seeds in the project if someone wants to do something else afterwards, because they are beautiful books. They are more difficult to adapt. They become more and more esoteric. It’s a bit more tricky to adapt, but I’m not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else.
Villeneuve may be looking ahead to his sand-free future, but he’s still in the depths of Dune Messiah. Asked how he will handle the twelve-year time jump between Dune and Dune Messiah, he says only, “That’s my problem. I know how to do that.”
He also emphasizes that his Dunes are not a trilogy, saying that the first two films, which adapt Frank Herbert’s first Dune book, are “a diptych.”
It was really a pair of movies that will be the adaptation of the first book. That’s done and that’s finished. If I do a third one, which is in the writing process, it’s not like a trilogy. It’s strange to say that, but if I go back there, it’s to do something that feels different and has its own identity.
It’s a bit odd that he says “if” he does a third one; back in April, it was confirmed that Villeneuve and Legendary Pictures are developing Messiah. But Villeneuve has been in movies a long time, and perhaps he’s just hyper-aware that it’s all theoretical until it’s in the can.
