Dune Part II has been officially announced and it will be coming to theaters in 2023, and I imagine fans of Denis Villeneuve‘s reimagining of Frank Herbert‘s landmark sci-fi novel would like to start filming on the sequel right away but it seems that the production on Dune Part Two won’t start filming until Fall 2022, which gives Villeneuve less than a year to complete filming and do all the post-production work on the sequel.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Villeneuve shared his excitement about the official go-ahead to Dune Part 2 by Legendary and Warner Bros., and he also added that the 45-days exclusive theatrical window the sequel will get “was a non-negotiable condition.” However, although the acclaimed filmmaker is happy that he gets to finish his vision of telling the epic story in two parts, Villeneuve has admitted that it’s so much pressure to finish the film of this scale in less than two years, he said that “No, that’s too soon, We still have a lot of work to do. It’d probably be more toward Fall, and even that would be fast.”
On the scope of the movie, Villeneuve said that the part of the movie needed for the sequel is already done, as both films were conceived as single stories. Check out Villeneuve’s quote below:
“The good news is that a lot of the work has been done already regarding design, casting, locations and writing. So we’re not starting from scratch. It’s not a long period of time, but I will try to face that challenge because it’s important for me that the audience sees Part Two as soon as possible. It’s not a sequel where it’s another episode or another story with the same characters. It actually has direct continuity to the first movie. It’s the second part of the big, huge movie that I’m trying to do. So, the sooner the better.”
Dune star-studded cast includes Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Oscar Isaac as Leto Atreides I, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Zendaya as Chani, Jason Momoma as Duncan Idaho, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban, and Stellan Skarsgard as Vladimir Harkonnen.
Dune: Part Two is all set to come to theaters on October 20, 2023.