Every­thing we know about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune

In 1984, David Lynch unveiled an adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi opus Dune so strange, so con­fus­ing, and so unprof­itable that Hol­ly­wood has spent the bet­ter part of three decades fig­ur­ing out what’s to be done with the cre­ative prop­er­ty. Exec­u­tives still see in the Dune IP a cash cow fran­chise in the mak­ing, but the wheels on such a project have only just begun turning.

After months of beat­ing around the bush and rumor-mon­ger­ing, copy­right hold­ers Leg­endary Enter­tain­ment final­ly pinned down Denis Vil­leneuve for a com­mit­ment to direct a new Dune in Feb­ru­ary of 2017. At the time, the direc­tor had his hands full with the impend­ing roll­out of Blade Run­ner 2049, so it wasn’t until March 2018 that he checked in with the pub­lic to reaf­firm that he was still on board, and that the doorstop­per nov­el would be split into two features.

Vil­leneuve penned the script in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Eric Roth, writer of The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton (which is encour­ag­ing) and Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close (which is less so), as well as Jon Spai­hts, the pen behind the wide­ly reviled Pas­sen­gers (which is the least so). He then con­tin­ued to staff up by tap­ping cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Greig Fras­er to bring some of the wide-angle grandeur of his Rogue One lens­ing to the table.

That left cast­ing, a process that’s still unfold­ing at the time of writ­ing – and at a painful­ly grad­ual pace. Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met took the lead role of cho­sen one Paul Atrei­des, mem­o­rably por­trayed in Lynch’s film by a feath­ery-haired Kyle MacLach­lan.

He’ll be joined by Rebec­ca Fer­gu­son in the role of Lady Jes­si­ca, a roy­al of great beau­ty and abil­i­ty that Her­bert alleged­ly based on his first wife. The only oth­er mem­bers of the cast announced at present are Stel­lan Skars­gård (as the mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal Baron Harkon­nen) and Dave Bautista (as Beast Rab­ban, the baron’s mad dog of a nephew). Most­ly recent­ly, Char­lotte Ram­pling has been added to the cast, accord­ing to The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, with Josh Brolin also in the mix.

Only time will tell who will fill the metal­lic dia­per of Feyd-Rautha pre­vi­ous­ly donned by Sting in the ear­li­er film.

At present, the details don’t cov­er much more than that, aside from mur­murs of plans to begin prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy in Feb­ru­ary of this year. The most tan­ta­liz­ing tid­bit comes from Vil­leneuve him­self, who’s been ret­i­cent in recent inter­views, but dropped the fol­low­ing tease in con­ver­sa­tion with Fan­dom: ​“Most of the main ideas of Star Wars are com­ing from Dune, so it’s going to be a chal­lenge to [tack­le] this… The ambi­tion is to do the Star Wars movie I nev­er saw. In a way, it’s Star Wars for adults. We’ll see.”

At long last, grown-ups will be able to enjoy sci­ence fiction.