Director Denis Villeneuve said one movie just wasn’t enough to do justice to Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic novel Dune.
“I would not agree to make this adaptation of the book with one single movie,” Villeneuve told Vanity Fair in an in-depth preview of his upcoming blockbuster. “The world is too complex. It’s a world that takes its power in details.”
#DUNE FIRST LOOK: Oscar Isaac is Duke Leto, father of Paul and head of House Atreides.
See more from @Breznican's film preview: https://t.co/ubFGRO3FWu pic.twitter.com/X6nNB4YAYC
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) April 14, 2020
Warner Brothers has not greenlit the second film yet. That will all depend on the success of the first film, however, which Villeneuve said would cover the first half of Herbert’s first book in the series.
This adaptation is the second big-screen attempt at Herbert’s masterwork, the first being a 1984 flop directed by David Lynch.
Villeneuve told Vanity Fair he considers Lynch “one of the best filmmakers alive,” but his version set to hit theaters in December will be different.
Villeneuve said it’s ”a book that tackles politics, religion, ecology, spirituality — and with a lot of characters. I think that’s why it’s so difficult. Honestly, it’s by far the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life.”
He also said the film tries to wrangle the broader context of Herbert’s book, “a distant portrait of the reality of the oil and the capitalism and the exploitation — the overexploitation — of Earth. Today, things are just worse,” he said.
But, he still considers the heart of it to be a “coming of age” story about the aristocrat Paul Atreides, played by Chalamet.
As loyal as he wants to be to the book, the writing takes some liberties by adding more female characters and making Baron Harkonnen less of a “caricature,” according to Villeneuve.
Dune is set to hit theaters December 18.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.