War, inheritance, and… a child? First Dune: Part 3 is available here Sand dunes

Timothée Chalamet may have finally survived Oscar season, but not movie promotion – the first look at Dune: Part Three is here.

The released first trailer for the final installment of director Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi trilogy sees more war and political unrest in the galaxy outside of Arrakis — as well as a possible future child for Chalamet’s Paul Atreides and Shani, a Fremen warrior played by Zendaya. “If we have a girl, what should we name her?” Chaney asks, noting that the two have reconciled since the end of Part 2.

This ending, a major departure from Frank Herbert’s 1965 volume, signals that Villeneuve will make significant changes to the sequel, 1969’s Dune: The Messiah, the basis for the third installment that had long been considered too strange, meandering, and dense to adapt.

The trailer for the final chapter also hints at the further expansion of Paul Atreides’ Imperial Rebellion, with several sneak peeks at spaceship battles, slaughter on Earth, and a new platinum-haired Scytale villain, played by Robert Pattinson. “War feeds on itself,” Chalamet’s Paul tells his mother, played by Rebecca Ferguson, in an ominous voice-over. “The more I fight…the more our enemies resist. I’m doing my best to protect my family. How did my father do that?”

“Your father never started the war,” she replies.

On Monday evening, Warner Bros. released stills of nine characters from the film to tease the “epic finale” and several new cast members, including Pattinson; Jason Momoa, returning as the reincarnated Duncan Idaho; and the previously unannounced Isaac De Bankole as Fremen leader Farouk.

Chalamet, as Paul Atreides, looks much different from the fresh-faced young man in previous entries, with red scars around his eyes and a menacing look, while Florence Pugh, as Princess Irulan, and Anya Taylor-Joy, as Paul’s now-adult sister Alya, appear with faces caked in mud and blood, respectively.

In a video message shown ahead of the exclusive screening in Los Angeles on Monday, Chalamet celebrated a production process lasting more than 150 days over eight years directed by “the master of cinema, the great artist Denis Villeneuve.”

“Dennis always says.”Live the cinemaHe added: “With this third film, I believe he has done just that: a true work of cinema. I’m not alone in saying thank you to Dennis for his dedication to bringing the Dune films, and now the Dune trilogy, to life.”

It appears that Villeneuve had no intention of returning to the world of Dune so soon after the sequel. “I went to my crew and said, ‘I’m taking a break. That’s it. Goodbye,” he said at the trailer launch party, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I came home and kept waking up in the middle of the night to those pictures. “I was supposed to do another movie.”

But “Portrait of the Dunes: Part 3…it kept coming back and coming back. So I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ The strong positive fan reaction to the second film also encouraged him to complete the trilogy faster than planned. “It’s a very different film from the first films,” he said. “It’s a good idea to return to those worlds, not with nostalgia, but with urgency.” “If the first film is a meditation, a boy exploring a new world, and the second is a war film, this one is thrilling. It’s full of action and tension. And more powerful.”

The events of the new film take place 17 years after the second part. “We see Paul dealing with the consequences of having too much power,” Villeneuve said. But even though the third installment follows people trying to take Paul down, “the heartbeat of the film is still the relationship between Paul and Chaney.”

The first Dune film, released as a standalone film in 2021, grossed $402 million worldwide despite its simultaneous release on HBO Max — a pandemic-era success — and earned 10 Oscar nominations, winning six. The sequel, released in March 2024, became the seventh highest-grossing film of the year with more than $715 million worldwide (and five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture).

Villeneuve reportedly shot the film last summer in Budapest, Hungary, and the Arabian Desert, partly with IMAX cameras. The film is scheduled to hit theaters on December 18 this year.