‘Dune 3,’ Says Denis Villeneuve, “Should Be The Last ‘Dune’ Movie For Me”

Denis Villeneuve has been clear that his vision for adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune series for the big screen involves three movies: Dune and Dune: Part Two, both adapted from Herbert’s original classic novel and a third film, Dune Messiah, based on Herbert’s 1969 sequel of the same name.

Herbert wrote four more Dune novels in his lifetime, but Villeneuve made it clear this week in an interview with Time that “Dune Messiah should be the last Dune movie for me.”

Last year, when the second film was coming together, Villeneuve told Empire, “If I succeed in making a trilogy, that would be the dream.” It seems he intends to be good to his word.

Villeneuve said that the third part would wrap up the franchise. After the first book sequel, he said, the other novels “become more… esoteric.”

Not that that would stop Warner Bros. should the studio want to carry on with the franchise. There are not only Herbert’s other six books, but another fourteen tomes written by the author’s son, Brian, and Kevin J. Anderson. They comprise three trilogies of prequels, a pair of novels intended to wrap up the storylines from Herbert’s original six books and a number of interstitial novels. That’s certainly more source material than Amazon had when it spent $250 million to acquire the TV rights to The Lord of the Rings.