Arriving with the immense might of one of its sandworms, Dune 2 hasn’t just wowed us, it’s opened up new opportunities for sci-fi cinema. Smartly written, carefully designed, and packing the most emotion of any Denis Villeneuve film, Part Two concludes the French-Canadian director’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic 1965 novel with the inventive, explosive energy that it deserves. It’s got us thinking that more difficult, lore-heavy, and cerebral sci-fi classics will now make it to the big screen.
But it wasn’t an easy road getting Dune: Part Two to us. Audiences may not be aware how unlikely it is for a vision-led $190 million blockbuster like it to be made – Villeneuve’s passion for the often deemed “unfilmable” novel had to wait until he had built studio confidence over the last ten years. He had to convince them that there would actually be an audience to watch the film, and that it would only work in two 2.5 hour parts that he had full creative control over.
