Denis Villeneuve is hopeful that he’ll get to make Dune: Part Two

After a great many delays, Dune is coming. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic lands in theaters and on HBO Max on October 22, but there’s an issue: the movie only covers the first half of Herbert’s book, and there’s no guarantee that we’ll get a follow-up.

That ‘s a little troubling, but Villeneuve sounds optimistic that he’ll get to tell the whole story. “There’s no such thing as Dune 1 and Dune 2. It’s Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two,” he told Total Film magazine. “We have been hearing in the past few decades that it’s not possible to adapt this book, and that it’s an impossible task. I think that in the back of the mind of the studio, it’s still the same!”

"So the first thing was to prove that there was a beautiful, popular movie that can exist, and I think that I proved that – everybody at Warner Bros and Legendary, they are 100 percent behind the project. They feel that it would need a really bad outcome at the box office to not have a Dune: Part Two, because they love the movie. They are proud of the movie, so they want the movie to move forward. And they still did half of it. So, you know, I’m very optimistic."

The movie does look pretty good — you can see that in the trailer above — but if the sequel depends on box office, that could be tricky, because box office numbers have been deflated for a long time because of that pesky pandemic that’s keeping people from going to the movie theaters.

Denis Villeneuve is still unhappy about Dune being released on HBO Max

To help with this, Warner Bros. is also releasing Dune on HBO Max, and I assume its streaming numbers will also play a role in whether it gets a sequel. Even so, Villeneuve isn’t a fan of this duel release strategy. “First of all, the enemy of cinema is the pandemic. That’s the thing. We understand that the cinema industry is under tremendous pressure right now. That I get,” he conceded. “[However], the way it happened, I’m still not happy. Frankly, to watch Dune on a television, the best way I can compare it is to drive a speedboat in your bathtub. For me, it’s ridiculous. It’s a movie that has been made as a tribute to the big-screen experience.”

As overblown as that sounds, this is actually a very tamped down version of what Villeneuve said when Warner Bros. first announced its plans to make all of its 2021 movies available on HBO Max. “With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history,” he seethed. “With HBO Max’s launch a failure thus far, AT&T decided to sacrifice Warner Bros.’ entire 2021 slate in a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.”

It sounds like things have cooled a bit since then, what with Villeneuve talking about making Part Two. For the record, I’m glad Warner Bros. is making the movie available on HBO Max. I plan to see it in theaters if I can because it does look like the kind of movie that benefit from being seen on the big screen, but I’m certainly not going to judge anyone who would rather watch it at home, whether because they don’t want to sit in a windowless room breathing in strangers’ germs  for two hours during a global pandemic or just because they feel like it. I’m glad we have options.

At any rate, I hope the first movie does well enough — however that’s judged these days — to get a sequel. Villeneuve is already working on it, so you might as well, right? “I’m writing [Part Two] now, and I feel like I’m eight years old again,” Villeneuve said. “That’s very uncommon for me. It’s the first time I’ve experienced it where I’m watching one of my movies, and I have a moment of deep gratitude, of deep joy, and I say, ‘Thank you, life, for having allowed me to bring that to the screen.’ [laughs] I don’t know how other people will feel about it. But me? Denis Villeneuve when he was 14 years old? Thank you.”

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