Legendary confirms Dune Messiah: Villeneuve's third Dune film is officially happening
- Legendary Entertainment has officially confirmed that Denis Villeneuve will direct a third Dune movie, Dune Messiah, based on Frank Herbert's 1969 sequel to Dune, according to Entertainment Weekly.
- Dune Messiah will not be Villeneuve's next film; he will first adapt Nuclear War: A Scenario, a nonfiction book by Annie Jacobsen, so fans face a wait before the third Dune movie arrives.
- Villeneuve told EW in 2021 that he always envisioned three movies, saying that following Paul Atreides through his full arc would take at least three films, and that the trilogy was the dream rather than a franchise.
- Herbert wrote Dune Messiah after deciding readers had misread the first book, according to what Villeneuve told Polygon: Herbert was disappointed that audiences treated Paul Atreides as a hero when he had intended something else.