Denis Villeneuve is Working on 4 Different Projects, Including ‘Dune: Messiah’
Denis Villeneuve has helmed some of the best movies of all time. Having made his feature film directorial debut with the 1998 film August 32nd on Earth, he is now best known for directing the new adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel Dune. The first Dune movie was released in October 2021 and continues to be the director’s highest-grossing movie to date.
Denis Villeneuve is back to enthrall the audiences with Dune: Part Two which is set to be released in March 2024. The movie would have been released sooner if it had not been for the unprecedented delays due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year. That being said, he is turning out to be quite the multitasker considering he is working on four different projects at the same time.
Denis Villeneuve is Simultaneously Working on Four Different Projects
Denis Villeneuve has credited great directors like Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Steven Spielberg for influencing his filmmaking abilities. With each new project that he undertakes, he proves just how he is at what he does.
During an interview with Cine21, in which he sat down with acclaimed Korean director Kim Han-min whose movie Noryang: Deadly Sea was released in late December 2023, Villeneuve revealed his plans, saying:
“You release your movie at the end of the year and me in two months and a half. My plan is to release the movie and after that, as I am doing so, I am working on four different screenplays. Not alone, of course, there are other filmm- sorry, screenwriters working and the movies are at different stages so I am trying to see which one will be the next.”
Villeneuve likes taking risks for the sake of making movies that he wants to make. For instance, he directed Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner even though he doubted that his career would be over if the movie flopped. Juggling four different projects at the same time does not seem to be a big deal for him.
Dune: Messiah Is One of the Movies Denis Villeneuve is Working On
In the past couple of years, Denis Villeneuve has often expressed his interest in making a third Dune movie based on the second Dune novel by Frank Herbert. According to the Arrival director, Dune: Messiah will serve as a conclusion to the Dune film trilogy.
During the Cine21 interview, Villeneuve stated that Dune: Messiah is one of the four films whose screenplays he is working on. However, he wishes to take a break from Dune before he delves back into it. Here is what he said:
“I know that Dune: Messiah will be one of them, but I don’t know that it will be the next one or the second next because I think it would be healthy for me to do something before going back to Arrakis; to go out of the desert and do something different before going back.”
When Kim Han-min suggested that Denis Villeneuve should take some rest before going back to filmmaking, the latter jokingly said that he asked for six months, but he was only given six days. As far as fans are concerned, they still have to wait quite sometime before they get to watch Dune: Part Two.
