April 8, 2024

Dune 3 Officially Confirmed By Denis Villeneuve and Legendary Pictures

Denis Villeneuve and Legendary Pictures will return to Arrakis in a recently confirmed third Dune movie. By: Kritchanon Tan Kian Wei

US - Dune film franchise director Denis Villeneuve and Legendary Pictures have announced that a third Dune movie is in development, in addition to an adaptation of the nonfiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, as part of a deal worth US$500,000 against US$1.5 million.

It is unclear when the third Dune movie will arrive or what the movie is about, but Legendary Pictures intends the movie to release before the Nuclear War adaptation. The third Dune movie will also likely adapt author Frank Herbert’s second Dune novel, titled Dune Messiah (1969).

Villeneuve had previously said in a Dune: Part Two press conference in South Korea in December 2023 that the screenplay for a then-unconfirmed third Dune film was almost finished, and implied that a third Dune film would likely be his last.

In late February 2024, composer Hans Zimmer, who worked on Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two, also revealed that he had begun making music for a third Dune film, joking: “Guess who hasn’t stopped writing? Denis comes in on the second day of shooting, and wordlessly comes in and puts Dune Messiah on my desk, and I know where we’re going and I know we’re not done.”

The recent announcement comes after the success of Dune: Part Two, which launched March 1 2024 in the US and currently has a worldwide box office haul of US$637 million and counting, making it the highest-grossing film of the year so far. Additionally, Nuclear War: A Scenario was recently released on March 26, and currently has an average rating of 4.58/5 on Goodreads.

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