Dune: Part Two cast and crew discuss the book, Feyd-Rautha and more at New York premiere

This Friday, Dune: Part Two lands in theaters, and like a sandworm crashing through battle lines of Harkonnen soldiers, it's poised to be a smashing success. The box office has gotten off to a slow start so far in 2024, but based on the sky-high hype that's surrounding Dune: Part Two, it feels pretty safe to say that movie theaters are probably going to have a very good next few weeks.

The movie has a recipe for success. We have visionary filmmaker Denis Villeneuve and his team setting out to do a faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 Dune novel, with a cast that is so star-studded you risk blindness just by looking upon them. We have Timothée Chalamet as rising messiah Paul Atriedes, Zendaya as his Fremen love interest Chani, Rebecca Ferguson as Paul's Bene Gesserit mother Lady Jessica, Javier Bardem as Fremen leader Stilgar, Austin Butler as the sadistic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Stellan Skarsgård as the nefarious Baron Harkonnen, Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Christopher Walken as the emperor of the universe, and more, so many more. Anya Taylor-Joy is in the movie in some mystery role, which we only found out once she started showing up to Dune: Part Two premieres. Movie casts just don't get more stacked than this.

It's easy to understand why so many stars have flocked to Dune. From Arrival to Bladerunner 2049, Denis Villeneuve has made a name for himself as a director seeking to make extraordinary movies. And Dune is a hugely influential science fiction book that holds a special place for a lot of people. That include Christopher Walken, who told Variety that he read the book many years ago and "grew up" with the series.

"I had read the book when I was young, and I had seen the first movie," Walken said. "So I kind of grew up with it. But this version of Dune is something else."

Walken isn't the only person attached to Dune with some buzzy quotes floating around this morning. Over the weekend, Dune: Part Two held its New York premiere, and plenty of actors and important crew members were on hand. Austin Butler also reflected on previous iterations of Dune, saying that he'd "seen Sting's performance" in David Lynch's 1984 version of the film.

"I'd seen that when I was a kid," Butler recalled, before mentioning that Sting was actually in attendance at the premiere. "I think what he did was extraordinary. But this film is so different [from Dune 1984], you know? Just watching Part One I knew that the tone of this film is very, very different, and so it provided a lot of latitude for me to play."

When Butler says "latitude for me to play," I imagine he means inhabit the mind and body of the psychotic villain Feyd-Rautha. If you've read Dune, you don't need me to tell you how downright horrifying Feyd-Rautha is; this is a character who will gladly murder people and take sadistic glee in the act. Butler has a reputation as a method actor who embodies his characters fully. But with a character as messed up as Feyd-Rautha, Butler felt it necessary to tone down his approach.

“I’ve definitely in the past, with Elvis, explored living within that world for three years and that being the only thing that I think about day and night,” Butler told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview.“With Feyd, I knew that that would be unhealthy for my family and friends.”

"And for me!" added Denis Villeneue, who was also present for the interview.

“And you. So I made a conscious decision to have a boundary,” Butler explained. “It allowed for more freedom between action and cut because I knew I was going to protect everybody else outside of the context of what we were doing. That’s not to say that it doesn’t bleed into your life. But I knew that I wasn’t going to do anything dangerous outside of that boundary, and in a way that allowed me to go deeper.”

Villeneuve remembered what it was like working with Butler when he was in character as Feyd-Rautha. “When the camera was on, it was like you were possessed. When the camera was off, you were still maybe 25 or 30% Feyd,” Villeneuve said. “Just enough to still be present and focus but removed enough that you didn’t kill anybody on set.”

It's good that no on-set murders occurred; apparently, filming as Feyd-Rautha was pretty uncomfortable. Per Variety, Butler explained how the physical difficulties of filming Dune brought the cast and crew together. “It was 110 degrees and so hot,” he said. “I had the bald cap on, and it was between two soundstages that were just these gray boxes of 200-foot walls and sand. It became like a microwave. There were people passing out from heat stroke. And that was just my first week.”

"It really bonds the entire crew. There’s something so humbling about being in such an uncomfortable environment."

Butler isn't the only one talking about Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Dune: Part Two screenwriter Jon Spaihts also talked up the new villain, and how he and Denis Villeneuve made a "conscious choice" not to include him in Dune: Part One so that he would have a bigger impact on the sequel.

"It's absolutely thrilling," Spaihts said. "It was a conscious choice we made to shove Feyd-Rautha out of the first film into the second, to let him wait for the sequel to come. But if you know the novel, there's a drumroll for that character the entire time. You're waiting for Paul's opposite number, his nemesis, to step onto the scene. So it was completely thrilling to get deeper into this dark world of the Harkonnens, and to let Feyd-Rautha take the spotlight finally."

Moving away from the dark minds of the Harkonnens, Dune composer Hans Zimmer was also on hand to tease his role in bringing this iconic sci-fi series to life onscreen. Zimmer reflected on how he and Gurney Halleck actor Josh Brolin had written "two or three songs" for Dune: Part One that ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor. We've already heard from Villeneuve about how painful it was to cut the scene of Gurney Halleck playing his baliset; it sounds like Zimmer still wants to see those songs appear somewhere, even if it means he and Brolin have to play them "unplugged."

"Josh and I actually have, probably two or three songs from the first movie that never made it into the movie," Zimmer said, when the interviewer brought up the missing Gurney Halleck song. "And I think Josh and I need to go and do our unplugged version very soon. I completely forgot about those."

Dune co-author endorses Villeneuve's Dune as "the best interpretation" of Frank Herbert's classic novel

Let's round things out with a quote from Brian Herbert, the son of original Dune author Frank Herbert and a prolific Dune creator in his own right. Brian Herbert and his writing partner Kevin J. Anderson have penned over a dozens Dune novels that continue the story after Herbert's original six books. He wasn't on hand at the New York premiere, but he has seen the movie, and had some things to say about it that should set any Dune fans nerves at ease.

"I saw Dune: Part Two at a private studio screening, and it is gratifying to see my father's story told with such great care," Herbert wrote on Twitter/X. "When the new movie is combined with Dune: Part One it is by far the best film interpretation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel DUNE that has ever been done."

You heard it from Brian Herbert himself: it's safe to get hype for Dune: Part Two. Now let's end things with a brief video of someone vacuuming sand off the red carpet at the premiere, because of course the studio brought a bunch of sand to the Dune premiere to create that Arrakis ambiance:

Dune: Part Two releases in theaters this Friday, March 1. Get your tickets now!

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