Following the release of Blade Runner 2049 last year, Denis Villeneuve is gearing up to once again dive back into the science fiction realm. However, instead of the rain-soaked noir landscape created by Ridley Scott, the Arrival director will instead make the jump to the Dune franchise for an adaptation of the beloved book of the same name. Dune fans have wondered about the status of the project for quite some time, and Villeneuve recently opened up in an interview at Cannes Film Festival to confirm that a script has been finished and he's getting to work on the first of multiple installments. Villeneuve explained:
Eric Roth wrote the first draft and I worked on my side afterward. I have not had such fun on the creative side since Incendies! My wish would have been to make both films at the same time but it will be too expensive. We will do them one at a time.
So, the script for the Dune adaptation has been completed, and Denis Villeneuve is now hard at work developing the project. The man behind Sicario has spoken passionately about his intentions for the project for quite some time (even drawing comparisons to the Star Wars franchise), and he has made slow and steady progress towards turning the project into a reality. Considering how much fun he claims to be having assembling the film, we may soon have another love letter to the sci-fi genre on our hands.
It also sounds like the director has his work cut out for him in terms of the sheer amount of material on his plate. In fact, elsewhere in his interview with La Presse at Cannes, it was confirmed that Denis Villeneuve plans to split the Dune source material and tell the story over the course of two movies. We have discussed this potential creative move in the past, and this affirms the fact that more than one Dune film is actually on the way -- though the director said he can't shoot them both simultaneously for financial reasons.
Dune is one of those properties that represents the benchmark for genuine sci-fi fandom. A novel series originally penned by Frank Herbert, the story centers on feuding houses of nobles on a futuristic planet Arrakis, with heavy thematic emphasis on ideas like environmentalism and gender roles. Dune was adapted to the big screen in 1984 when David Lynch's Dune debuted, but Denis Villeneuve has made it very clear that he wants to take the franchise in a new direction and properly adapt it based on his own unique vision for the property.
CinemaBlend will bring you more information related to the upcoming Dune movie as more details about the film are made available to us. For now, make sure to head over to CinemaBlend's comprehensive movie premiere guide to keep yourself in-the-loop on all of 2018's most highly-anticipated film debuts, and fill out your moviegoing calendars!
