Dune is a story that many believed was unfilmable, and it’s quite possible that, as a single film, it is. However, director Denis Villeneuve has at least proven that the first half of Dune is filmable as the movie was good enough, both in box office and critical acclaim, to make the sequel happen that will finish the story. And now that story is one step closer as production has wrapped and Timothée Chalamet is celebrating.
Paul Atreides himself took to Instagram to post a picture of his smiling face out in the desert as he announced that production on Dune: Part Two has officially wrapped. One has to assume this shoot was on the tough side, but you wouldn’t know it from the look on Chalamet’s face.
Principal photography is done, but of course Dune: Part Two has a lot more work ahead of it. It now enters the lengthy post-production process ahead of the film’s scheduled release date, just about 11 months from now. And some amount of reshoots will almost certainly be needed, they almost always are on productions of this scale, so Timothée Chalamet probably isn’t quite done filming yet.
Still, this is a significant milestone for Dune: Part Two. The film had already seen a minor release date delay, from October 2023 into November, so the wheels had obviously been turning slightly slower than anticipated on this one. Probably not that big a surprise considering the massive cast and the fact that production needed to take place largely in the middle of the desert.
Most of the main cast of Dune: Part One will be returning minus, one assumes, the characters that didn’t survive the first film. Several new characters that weren’t introduced in the first film will be introduced as well.
It wasn’t that long ago that we really didn’t know if this production would even happen. While the decision to split Frank Herbert’s Dune into a pair of films rather than try and get it all done in one, was given the green light, the second film was never actually confirmed until after the first one showed some success. And with the global pandemic there were many questions about whether Dune could be a box office success, even if it was generally seen as good.
$400 million in global box office receipts later, it’s all but certain the audience will be there when Dune: Part Two comes out next year. In addition to financial success the movie brought home six of the 10 Oscars it had been nominated for. The sequel is going to have a high bar to reach to do as well as the first film, and anything less will likely be seen as a disappointment.
