Take a look at the massive sandworms in Dune 2020!

The sandworms of Dune should be mammoth and intimidating, yet also graceful and beautiful. Does the new movie pull it off? Take a look.

Arrival director Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2020 (even before everything started getting pushed back thanks to COVID-19). Dune is a fantastic, hugely influential sci-fi story that’s never quite been done right onscreen, despite some valiant efforts. It tells the story of Paul Atreides, the scion of a noble house who travels with his family to the desert planet of Arrakis, aka Dune, a harsh environment populated by the hardy Fremen people and gigantic sandworms that spell death to anyone caught unawares on the sands.

The cast of the movie is ridiculous: in addition to Timothée Chalamet as Paul, it features the likes of Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and more. But it’s starting to look like the sandworms may steal the show.

Empire is doing a feature on Dune for its next issue. They shared three variant covers online, and the one with the sandworms has me excited and a little scared:

Eep.

Villeneuve has said that he spent over a year getting the sandworms just right, and it looks like that time paid off. The creatures should be monstrous and terrifying yet also strangely beautiful. I think that picture about sums it up.

Other covers show off that impressive cast I mentioned, including Rebecca Ferguson as Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica…

…and Sharon Duncan-Brewster as planetary ecologist and Fremen leader Dr. Liet Kynes:

Dune comes out in theaters on December 18, coronavirus permitting. We’re getting a trailer on September 9.

Although he won’t have a cameo in the new movie, Kyle MacLachlan — who played Paul Atreides in David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune — is still very interested in seeing the new film. “I’m really curious,” he told Collider. “[Denis Villeneuve] is a terrific filmmaker. He’s an extraordinary filmmaker, and his approach will be interesting. The cast is amazing. I think he’s done a beautiful job. Timothée [Chalamet] will be wonderful as Paul. I’m looking forward to it. I love that world so much. I’m a huge fan of the book. I’ve read the book, many, many, many times, both before we did the film and after we finished our film. It remains one of the anchors, really, in terms of the books that I return to, that made a big impression on me, when I was growing up. It was maybe number one. So, yes, I will always look for and watch anything that has to do with Dune.”

Lynch, on the other hand, feels differently:

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