Director Denis Villeneuve (
Arrival,
Sicario,
Blade Runner 2049) is currently working on his adaptation of
Dune, the popular science fiction novel by Frank Hebert that was first brought to the big screen by David Lynch in 1984. That movie doesn’t come out for another thirteen months (12/18/2020), but Warner Bros. must really like what they’ve seen of it so far, as the news came out this week that
a screenwriter has already been hired to work on the second
Dune movie. That job is going to screenwriter Jon Spaihts, the sole screenwriter credited for 2016’s
Passengers, who also co-wrote the
Alien prequel
Prometheus, Marvel’s
Doctor Strange, and Villeneuve’s first
Dune movie. Spaihts
had been working for HBO Max as the showrunner of a
Dune: The Sisterhood series, but he’s stepping down from that responsibility to focus on the second
Dune instead. There have been reports in the past that the first new
Dune movie
will only adapt about half of the eponymous novel, so it may be more accurate to describe the second
Dune movie not so much as a “sequel” as a continuation of the same adaptation (sort of like
IT and
IT: Chapter Two). Denis Villeneuve’s all-star
Dune cast includes Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson (as Lady Jessica), and Timothée Chalamet (as Paul Atreides).
