Hot on the heels of the recent announcement that Avengers: Endgame actor Josh Brolin has been added to the cast of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Variety reports that yet another major franchise star could be coming on board.
Fresh off the box office success of DC’s Aquaman, Jason Momoa is in negotiations for a role in Legendary Entertainment’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel. Should the deal close, Momoa will play Duncan Idaho, a Swordmaster in the house of Atreides and the right-hand man of Duke Leto Atreides, who’ll be played by Star Wars Sequel Trilogy regular Oscar Isaac. Interestingly, Duncan is the only character to show up in all six novels of Herbert’s Dune series, meaning that if Legendary is looking to make a franchise out of the property, then Momoa could be in it for the long haul.
In any case, Villeneuve’s film already boasts a formidable line-up that includes such familiar figures as Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem, alongside the aforementioned Brolin and Isaac. In the lead role, meanwhile, is Timothée Chalamet of Call Me by Your Name fame, who plays Paul Atreides, the son of Duke Leto who leads a rebellion to restore his family’s reign.
Evidently, Villeneuve and Legendary aim to go big with this production, presumably hoping that the movie will fare a lot better with filmgoers than David Lynch’s 1984 take on the same material, which bombed at the box office but has since developed a cult following. In Villeneuve’s own words, the new Dune is intended to be “Star Wars for adults,” and we’ll hopefully get a better idea of just what that entails when the pic goes into production later this year.
