Director Denis Villeneuve has confirmed Dune 3 will be his last movie in the franchise.

The Arrival filmmaker confirmed to Vanity Fair that his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune Messiah will be his final Dune instalment because he’s ready to move on to other projects.

“Listen, if Dune: Messiah happens, it will have been many years for me on Arrakis, and I would love to do something else,” he said, before noting that he wouldn’t mind another director taking over and adapting Herbert’s subsequent sci-fi novels.

“I think that it would be a good idea for me to make sure that, in Messiah, there are the seeds in the project if someone wants to do something else afterwards, because they are beautiful books,” he continued. “They are more difficult to adapt. They become more and more esoteric. It’s a bit more tricky to adapt, but I’m not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else.”

Villeneuve explained that his Dune films shouldn’t be seen as a trilogy, insisting that he simply needed two movies to cover the events of Herbert’s first Dune novel. He added that Dune Messiah will feel “different” and have “its own identity” because it is based on the second book, which is set 12 years later.

Addressing the fact he will need to age his cast, which includes Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh and Zendaya, he stated, “That’s my problem. I know how to do that.”

Dune: Part One was released in 2021 and Dune: Part Two came out earlier this year. Following its critical and commercial success, Villeneuve confirmed he was writing Dune Messiah with the view to direct it.

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