‘Dune: Messiah’: Timothée Chalamet & Zendaya Are “Super Enthusiastic” About Returning For A 3rd Film

We’re still about a month away from the long-awaited release of “Dune: Part Two.” After the massive success of the first film, both financially and critically, there are many expecting the sequel to be nothing short of a sci-fi masterpiece. Well, that praise is still premature, but the hype does have people expecting a quick announcement from the studio about the already-in-development “Dune: Messiah,” which would be the third and final chapter of Denis Villeneueve’s ‘Dune’ trilogy. And when you hear the people involved talk about it, it seems like everyone is really excited by the prospect of finishing the epic story with a third film.

READ MORE: Denis Villeneuve Says He’s “More Happy” With ‘Dune: Part Two’ & A Script For A Potential ‘Dune: Messiah’ Film Is Almost Finished

Speaking to TotalFilm, Denis Villeneueve, as well as his two ‘Dune’ stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, talked about the possibility of an adaptation of the book, “Dune: Messiah,” which would finish the story of Paul Atreides. However, no one is ready to say it’s definitely going to happen. That said, if it does, Villeneuve won’t have any problem convincing his stars to return.

“Denis is an artist, and doesn’t like to share things until he’s got it figured out,” Zendaya said. “So whenever he’s ready, we’re all keenly ready to hear what his vision is.”

Chalamet added, “The idea excites me very much. If the time and opportunity comes to complete the story with ‘Messiah,’ I think we’re all super-enthusiastic about that.”

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For those who haven’t read the ‘Dune’ novels, ‘Messiah’ is actually the second book in the series. Villeneuve split the original “Dune” into two parts, allowing him to cover the entirety of the epic story and give the necessary time to the story. But ‘Messiah’ is a much shorter novel and actually can be thought of more as like an extended epilogue. Sure, it’s a complete story, but it really does feel like a continuation of Frank Herbert’s original plan for the story. If you read “Dune” and didn’t read ‘Messiah,’ you probably wouldn’t get the full vision of the author. (It’s really difficult to explain this without going into spoilers.) Needless to say, there’s a reason Villeneuve is trying to get the third film made.

As for the status of ‘Messiah,’ Villeneuve has already said the script is nearly complete. And he believes the third film would really put the bow on his trilogy of films.

“All of the elements are there,” Villeneuve said. “But I think the movie adaptation is more tragic than the book. The way that ‘Part Two’ ends… it would create a total balance and equilibrium to finish Paul’s storyline in what we could say in ‘Part Three.’”

But as mentioned above, before we get to ‘Messiah,’ we have to wait and see what happens with ‘Part Two.’ Fans of the novel are really excited by what’s to come in the film because the second half of “Dune” really is where all of the huge action and drama happens. If nothing else, it’ll be an incredibly exciting film. But it appears Villeneuve isn’t being completely beholden to the source material. In fact, the filmmaker also explained (via TotalFilm again) one major change he’s made when adapting ‘Part Two,’ and it involves Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica character.

“Strangely, Jessica’s more in the background in the second part [of the novel] – I thought that was not proper,” he said. “She’s still Lady Jessica, the main architect of the story. I thought that was a very powerful idea that was not sustained in the book. I made sure that she has the character presence in the second part.”

Will “Dune: Part Two” be more successful than the first film? Everyone is assuming so, considering the first film made $400 million worldwide while also being released on Max at the same time. And if the film can make more money, while still being just as critically beloved, it almost seems like ‘Messiah’ is a done deal. We’ll likely find out more when “Dune: Part Two” arrives on March 1.