Dune has been out in the States for nearly a month now, and the movie has done well enough for Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel. That’s good news for fans, because the first movie only adapts the first half of Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction book.
The first film ends with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) flee from the destruction of their home and are formally admitted into the society of the Fremen, the native people of the desert planet Arrakis. But that wasn’t always the place director Denis Villeneuve was going to end things. “e tried also to break it a bit later, he told Empire. “Because in the book, there’s a natural moment – there’s like a two-year gap or something like that.” He’s referring to a section of the book that happens a little further on, after Paul and Jessica get to know their new Fremen hosts a bit better.
"But it didn’t work out because it really felt like at the very end of two hours and a half, you were suddenly starting a new story – which is the one of Paul and Jessica being introduced to Fremen culture and being accepted by the Fremen. It was feeling like the beginning of a new chapter, which felt very heavy at the end of the- I’m 100% positively convinced that we stuck at the right moment, where we finally feel that Paul has [gone] from being a boy to an adult, and having all this arc of this first part completed."
There’s a lot more to come in season 2, including (we assume) the return to several characters from the first half. Will we see people like Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) and Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson) again?
“Well, that is a major spoiler!” Villeneuve said. “As Timothée kept saying, the book has been out there for 60 years, it’s a very well known story – but yes, some will reappear out of the dust.”
"Part Two will be such a cinematic treat. Making Part One for me was just to [set] the table, you know? And to explain the cultures and the background of all the different planets and civilizations. And then to have that chance, now that everything is set, Part Two will be just an amazing playground. It will be so fun to do."
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen will “definitely” be in Dune: Part Two
There are also some characters who didn’t appear in Dune: Part One at all, most notably Feyd-Rautha, another nephew of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), and quite a bit more savvy than Glossu Rabban (Dave Bautista).
If you’re familiar with David Lynch’s 1984 Dune movie, Feyd-Rautha is the character Sting played, the one who wears the funny underwear:
That’ll be a tough act to follow. But Villeneuve assures that Feyd-Rautha will “definitely” be in Part Two. “That’s a choice that I personally brought on. There was enough characters that were introduced in this first part, and it will be more elegant to keep Feyd for Part Two. It will be definitely a very, very important character in the second part.”
There will be other changes in Part Two. For instance, you may have noticed that for most of Dune, the characters refer to the desert planet as “Arrakis,” its proper name. But it’s known colloquially as Dune, something we may hear more now that Paul and Jessica are embedded with the native people. “I decided that for this first part to focus on the idea that the planet — It is mentioned ‘Dune’ from time to time, but mostly we just say Arrakis, as in the book,” Villeneuve said. “But again, maybe there will be a Part Two, and things might change…”
Dune: Part Two starts filming next year, and is set for release in October 20, 2023.
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