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A third Dune movie, Dune: Messiah, is officially in the works, according to Entertainment Weekly and Deadline. The latter site reported that director Denis Villeneuve and Legendary are developing the movie “as the conclusion of the trilogy.”
Making three Dune films has been Villeneuve’s plan all along. “I always envisioned three movies,” Villeneuve told EW. “It’s not that I want to do a franchise, but this is Dune, and Dune is a huge story. In order to honor it, I think you would need at least three movies. That would be the dream. To follow Paul Atreides and his full arc would be nice.”
The last we heard before this was that Villenueve would make Dune: Messiah if the script was good enough. Important to note here is that just because a movie is in “development,” that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be made soon or ever.
Villeneuve is also reportedly attached to a nuclear war movie as one of his four upcoming projects. Dune: Messiah reportedly will not be his next film, as he plans to shift to other projects before returning to Dune if the fates allow.
“I have four projects on the table currently. One of them is a secret project that I cannot talk about right now, but that needs to see the light of day quite quickly. So it would be a good idea to do something in between projects, before tackling Dune Messiah and Cleopatra,” he said in March. “All these projects are still being written, so we’ll see where they go, but I have no control over that.”
Across its two recent installments, the Dune series has earned more than $1 billion at the box office. 1984’s Dune, from director David Lynch, was much less of a success; it earned just $31 million against a $40 million budget.
