Dune director Denis Villeneuve is ready to leave Arrakis behind, eager to pass the torch to a new visionary.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the director announced he’s stepping away from the universe he brought to life, however he is not closing the door entirely.
“It’s important that people understand that for me, it was really a diptych. It was really a pair of movies that will be the adaptation of the first book,” he said. “If I do a third one, which is in the writing process, it’s not like a trilogy.”
Alongside revealing that the upcoming movie won’t be a trilogy and that he won’t be directing any future instalments, Villeneuve, 56, promised to plant seeds in the third part to help guide future directors in continuing the story.
“Listen, if Dune: Messiah happens, it will have been many years for me on Arrakis, and I would love to do something else,” he said. “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,” Villeneuve teased the nature of potential future films, adding, “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.”
Additionally, Dune Messiah is set 12 years after the first Dune book, so the film adaptation would need to age up its cast, including Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, which at present is the main problem of Villeneuve.
