It would be underselling it significantly to say that director Denis Villenueve was pissed about Warner Bros. sending his sci-fi epic Dune to HBO Max the same day it hit theaters, and the filmmaker wasn’t shy in publicly blasting his paymasters over the call, claiming that they might have killed his planned franchise before it had even gotten started.
There’s an awful lot riding on Dune, not least of all a budget that’s reported to be hovering around the $165 million mark. Frank Herbert’s source novel has been deemed un-filmable on more than one occasion, and the last time it was brought to the big screen by David Lynch those claims looked to be right on the money, yielding nothing but a lavish box office bomb.
Villenueve is only telling half of the story as well, in the hopes that Dune performs well enough to warrant a sequel that’ll bring the story to a suitably spectacular conclusion. We’re still several months out from the October 22nd release date, but a new batch of character posters have arrived to reveal all of the major players, which you can check out below.
One thing Dune definitely isn’t short of is star power, with Timothee Chalamet headlining an all-star cast that also includes Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgard, David Dastmalchian, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa and more, who boast vast levels of critical and commercial adulation between them.
The trailers have painted Dune as having the potential to be something truly special, and in three months we’ll find out if it really does live up to the hype as this generation’s The Lord of the Rings.
Published: Jul 19, 2021 11:49 am