Rumors of Dune: Part Three have been going around way back since December, but Denis Villeneuve fans can finally rest easy.
Deadline has confirmed that the third part of Villneuve’s planned trilogy, Dune: Messiah, is now official in development. This comes with the announcement that Villeneuve’s next project with Legendary after Messiah will be an adaptation of the nonfiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario written by Annie Jacobsen.
Dune fans will know that the first two movies are actually adaptations of just the first book (among a series of Dune novels). With Dune: Messiah, Villeneuve is expected to delve into the tragedy of House Atreides and where the story goes after Paul names himself as the new emperor of the known universe.
While the first two films were very direct adaptations, Villeneuve is expected to diverge even further from the source material with Messiah. The biggest departure was with the character of Chani (Zendaya). Though Chani was an unwavering supporter of Paul in the books, she had become the character to see the danger of what Paul was to become if they had won against the Harkonnens.
With Dune said to be a cautionary tale on the problem with ‘chosen ones’ and messiahs, Dune: Messiah is expected to drive the point home, complete with the thousands of years of the Atreides domination, and Paul’s son being a literal half-person, half-worm.
It’s going to be wild.
For now, you can enjoy Dune: Part Two which just became available on digital. No release date has been announced for Dune: Messiah.
