Normally, the description of a film as a “sci-fi epic” normally means there will be a heavy amount of CGI and greenscreen work. However, for Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming feature, “Dune,” that’s not necessarily the case. Obviously, there will be plenty of CGI, but the vast landscapes of the desert planet, Arrakis, were created using real locations, including the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. And “Dune” star Timothée Chalamet thinks the real locations add something special to the highly-anticipated sci-fi epic.
Speaking to Empire, Chalamet described shooting the desert scenes in the film at a real desert and why this makes the film more “thrilling.”
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“That part of the Wadi Rum is so awe-inspiring, you might as well be getting chased by that cliff in the background,” Chalamet said. “It wasn’t a green-screen or anything. That’s one of the most thrilling parts of the book and the movie. We had the sketches. That was a lesson for me. On a ‘Call Me By Your Name’ or ‘Beautiful Boy’ it can be counterintuitive to see the storyboards because then maybe you limit yourself based on a camera angle or whatever. It’s the opposite [here] because, for a sequence with the sandworm chasing you, I could never imagine that.”
For the past few months, Warner Bros. has been teasing “Dune,” trickling out new information and new images without anything concrete about the release date. Sure, the film, based on Frank Herbert’s classic novel, is scheduled for a December release, but with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many of the 2020 blockbusters to move into 2021, we’re still not 100% sure that “Dune” will arrive this year. That being said, reports point to the fact that “Dune” will have its first trailer released sometime in the next couple of weeks, so perhaps we’ll learn a definitive date at that point.
As mentioned, “Dune” stars Chalamet, but also features an incredible cast that includes Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem. You can see new images from the feature below, courtesy of Empire.
