Dune: Part Two is set to arrive in theaters in a few months and director Denis Villeneuve has said that he’ll need a break before attempting the next film. Villeneuve was in South Korea promoting the second film, which is planned to be released in March 2024, where he spoke about it, and the possibilities of bringing Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah to the big screen. While cautiously optimistic that the studio will greenlight Dune: Part Three the accomplished director shared that he’ll need some time away from the project for his own mental health before taking on the final film of the planned trilogy.
Per Variety:
“I don’t know exactly when I will go back to Arrakis,” Villeneuve said. “I might make a detour before just to go away from the sun. For my mental sanity I might do something in between, but my dream would be to go a last time on this planet that I love.”
While Dune: Part One managed to get made just as the pandemic hit, and then released both simultaneously in theaters and on streaming, filming for the second film had to endure delays brought on both by it and then the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes. It’s no surprise that all of this combined would take a toll on any filmmaker attempting as ambitious of a project as these film adaptations. Despite the fact that the first film managed nearly a half-billion dollars in ticket sales, along with ten Oscar nominations and six wins, Villeneuve goes on to say that he feels much more confident about the quality of the second film.
Per Variety:
“For me, this film is much better than Part One,” Villeneuve said. “There’s something more alive in it. There’s a relationship to the characters. I was trying to reach for an intensity and a quality of emotions that I didn’t reach with Part One and that I did reach with Part Two. I’m not saying the film is perfect, but I’m much more happy with Part Two than I was with Part One. I can not wait to share it with the fans and the moviegoers.”
Denis Villeneuve also says that the third film is already in the process of being written and the screenplay is almost complete. He humbly states that the third film’s fate ultimately rests on the success of part two but it does make sense to complete the trilogy.