Dune 3 Gets Closer As Denis Villeneuve Aims To Shoot Messiah This Summer

The visions are clear now. We see possible futures, all at once. Clickbait rumours about Dune: Messiah are all around us, and in so many futures they prevail. But we do see a way... there is a narrow way through. And, as is often the case, it appears that Deadline has found it. Per the trade's reporting, it's looking like cinema's very own Lisan al Gaib, Denis Villeneuve, is gearing up to start shooting Messiah — or Dune 3, if you prefer — this summer.

According to "multiple well-placed sources", Villeneuve and his team, who've been in pre-production on the sequel to Dune: Part Two for some time now, have been working hard to be in a position to get cameras rolling potentially as early as July. And while we haven't had any confirmed casting on the movie as of yet, a mid-to-late summer shoot could work well for the trilogy capper's expected key players. Timothée Chalamet has just recently finished shooting Marty Supreme, while Zendaya will prospectively have wrapped on both Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and Spider-Man 4 before the clocks go back in autumn. As for Florence Pugh and Anya Taylor-Joy, both of whom had smaller roles in Part Two ahead of expectedly much bigger parts in Villeneuve's final trip to Arrakis, the former is currently in Australia shooting East Of Eden ahead of Thunderbolts*' release in May, while the latter's slate is currently looking pretty clear through the middle of 2025. Again though, for now at least, all of these key players and more (Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin et al.) have yet to be officially confirmed to reprise their roles ahead of what is likely to be an almighty time-jump.

If as expected Villeneuve rounds out his Dune trilogy with an adaptation of Frank Herbert's sequel novel Dune: Messiah, then we can look forward to a twelve-year leap into Arrakis' future, into a time where Paul Atreides (Chalamet) has ruled as Emperor for over a decade, unleashing an unstoppable jihad across the universe while being incapable himself of stopping the wheels of fate that he helped set in motion from turning. In short, if you thought the first two Dune movies were pretty full on, then you ain't seen nothin' yet. We'll find out whether Villeneuve leads us to cinematic paradise or moviegoing hell when his Dune concludes, *potentially* in December 2026.