In two short months, we'll return to Arrakis for the final chapter in director Denis Villeneuve's Dune trilogy — but don't expect this return voyage to be easy, or too similar to the previous two films. While Dune: Part One and Part Two were both drawn from Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 novel, Part Three adapts the second book in the saga, Dune Messiah. It's a much more focused, introspective affair, and the tone is much more dour.
Bringing this material to the screen was a challenge that Villeneuve was eager to tackle. “The idea was to try to make a movie that will have the same DNA — it’s a Dune movie — but it’s a very different movie,” Villeneuve told Empire for their forthcoming Dune: Part Three issue, on sale Thursday, October 22. “It has a different pacing.”
From the books, that pacing difference cannot be understated. Dune is a sweeping epic with a significant passage of time, as Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) survives the Harkonnen coup which kills his father, lives among the Fremen in the desert, and re-emerges as a messiah-like figure to lead them on a holy war across the known galaxy. Dune Messiah is barely half the length of its predecessor, takes place after a significant time jump, and is all about the toll of this holy war on the galaxy and Paul as a person.
The "world has totally changed" in Dune: Part Three
Dune: Part Three will lean into those ideas wholeheartedly. It takes place 17 years after the end of the second movie, which saw Paul secure the imperial throne through a political marriage to Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) before setting off on his holy war. Nothing is the same for characters like Paul, his Fremen lover, Chani (Zendaya), or his terrifyingly prescient sister, Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy).
“We are back with the same characters, but this time the world has totally changed,” Villeneuve teased. “Their psyches, their perspective on reality has totally changed, and Paul is living with the burden of what he created, trying to find a way out of this spiral of violence.”
Villeneuve isn't kidding when he talks about this story exploring Paul's psyche as the architect of the most horrific genocide in human history. The death toll from his years of war is utterly catastrophic, and it weighs on Paul immensely in the book. He often felt like the hero of the story in the first two movies; but here at last, there's no room for ambiguity about the destruction his choices have wrought.
“That phrase ‘anti-hero’ gets thrown around a little too loosely perhaps, but it’s fantastic to chew on as an actor, where it’s not purely redemptive,” said Timothée Chalamet, explaining that Dune: Part Three is, “its own beast. It’s its own story, its own siege, its own hail of paranoid isolation.”
EXCLUSIVE 🚨
— Empire (@empiremagazine) October 15, 2026
Dune: Part Three will be “its own beast” compared to the first two films, says Timothée Chalamet.
“It’s its own story, its own siege, its own hail of paranoid isolation,” the actor tells Empire.
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Denis Villeneuve will helm a new 007 movie after Dune: Part Three
For a while, it seemed like Denis Villeneuve was going to take a break after Dune: Part Two to work on a different project before returning for his final outing to Arrakis. That changed with the massive success of Dune: Part Two, which no doubt resulted in more pressure from the studio for a quicker turnaround on the sequel. However, Villeneuve says his decision primarily stemmed from more artistic concerns; namely, he wanted to put a pin in the series so that he could truly lay it to rest before moving on.
“I said, ‘Maybe it’s a good idea to go back to this project, not out of nostalgia, not because I miss it, but the opposite — I’m tired of it,’” he said. “I want to make sure that I will be severe with the material. That I will not be complacent.”
Based on how the first two movies went, I doubt complacency is something we need to worry about from Villeneuve and the top notch cast and crew he's assembled for these films. After he says goodbye to Dune, he'll be trading out the vastness of one of the all-time great science fiction sagas for a totally different, even more iconic project: directing the next James Bond movie.
“I thought, ‘When it’s done, I need a very powerful rocket to pull me away from Arrakis.’ When I was asked to do the next Bond, I said: ‘Okay, this is what I need,'" Villeneuve joked.
When does Dune: Part Three come out?
Dune: Part Three premieres in theaters and IMAX on December 18. Presale tickets are currently available in select theaters. As for Villeneuve's James Bond movie, things are still in early days, though casting rumors abound.
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