War, inheritance and…a baby? First Dune: Part Three trailer is here | Dune
Timothée Chalamet may have finally survived Oscar season, but not his movie promotion; The first look at Dune: Chapter Three has arrived.
The first trailer for the final installment of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi trilogy bears witness to more war and political turmoil in the galaxy beyond Arrakis, as well as the possible future child of Chalamet’s Paul Atreides and Fremen warrior Chani, played by Zendaya. “If we have a daughter, what should her name be?” Chani asks, suggesting that the two have been making up since the end of Chapter Two.
This ending, a major departure from Frank Herbert’s 1965 book, suggested that Villeneuve would make significant changes to the sequel to 1969’s Dune: Messiah, which was the basis for Part Three, long considered too strange, convoluted and dense to adapt.
The trailer for the latest episode also hints that Paul Atreides’ imperial rebellion is expanding further, with glimpses of spaceship battles, ground-based massacres, and a new villain in the platinum-haired Scytale, played by Robert Pattinson. “War feeds on itself,” Chalamet’s Paul tells his mother, played by Rebecca Ferguson, in an ominous voiceover. “The harder I fight… the more our enemies fight back. I do the best I can to protect my family. How did my father do this?”
“Your father never started a war,” he replies.
On Monday evening, Warner Bros. released stills featuring nine characters from the film depicting the “epic ending” and several new cast members, including Pattinson; Jason Momoa returns as the reincarnated Duncan Idaho; and a previously undisclosed Isaach de Bankolé as Fremen leader Farok.
As Paul Atreides, Chalamet looks very different from the fresh-faced teenagers in previous entries, with red scars around his eyes and a menacing gaze; Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan and Anya Taylor-Joy as Paul’s now-adult sister Alia appear with faces covered in mud and blood, respectively.
One video message Played ahead of a special screening in Los Angeles on Monday, Chalamet celebrated a production process that took eight years and more than 150 days, overseen by “the master of cinema, the great artist Denis Villeneuve.”
“Denis always says:live the cinema‘ and with this third film, I think he’s done just that: a real act of cinema,” he added. “I’m not alone in thanking Denis for his commitment to bringing the Dune films and now the Dune trilogy to life.”
It seems Villeneuve had no intention of returning to the Dune universe so soon after Part Two. “I walked up to my team and said, ‘I’m taking a break. That’s it. Bye,'” he said at the trailer launch event. Hollywood Reporter. “I returned home and kept waking up in the middle of the night with these images. I had to make another movie.”
But “the image of Dune: Episode 3… just kept coming back. I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.'” Fans’ strong positive response to the second film also encouraged him to complete the trilogy faster than he had planned. “It is a very different film from the first films. It is a good idea to return to those worlds urgently, not with nostalgia,” he said. “If the first film was a brooding, boy discovering a new world, and the second was a war movie, this is a thriller. Action-packed and tense. More muscular.”
The new movie takes place 17 years after Part Two. “We see Paul dealing with the consequences of having too much power,” Villeneuve said. But even though Part Three is about people trying to take down Paul, “the heartbeat of the film is still the relationship between Paul and Chani.”
The first Dune, released as a standalone film in 2021, grossed $402 million worldwide despite a simultaneous release on HBO Max — a pandemic-era feat — and received 10 Oscar nominations, winning six. The Second Chapter, released in March 2024, became the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year, grossing more than $715 million worldwide (and five Oscar nominations, including best picture).
Villeneuve reportedly shot the film last summer in Budapest, Hungary and the Arabian desert, partly with Imax cameras. The film is scheduled to be released in theaters on December 18 this year.
