Everything We Know About How Dune 2 Is Doin’

He gets to marry Florence Pugh and be soul mates with Zendaya? Photo: Niko Tavernise

Just when Timothée Chalamet got the last bit of sand out of his hair, he’s going back to the desert. Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping adaptation of the 1965 science-fiction novel by Frank Herbert, is officially getting a sequel. “I just received news from Legendary that we are officially moving forward with Dune: Part Two,” Villeneuve said in a statement in October 2021, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a dream of mine to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune, and I have the fans, the cast and crew, Legendary and Warner Bros. to thank for supporting this dream. This is only the beginning.” With Dune: Part Two solidly in place, it’s time we check in on this upcoming sand-based film and its shifting release date. Below is what we know about Dune: Part Two.

Austin Butler is completely hairless in the latest trailer.

Chalamet fights beside Zendaya’s Chani in the latest trailer for Dune 2 — and snags a kiss. “I see possible futures all at once, and in so many futures our enemies prevail,” he narrates. “But I do see a way. There is a narrow way through.” The Fremen, though, aren’t too keen to embrace the outsider whose blue eyes haven’t come in yet, so Josh Brolin tells him to embrace the murmurs that he’s some kind of prophet. Elsewhere, Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan plots, and Austin Butler’s “psychotic” Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen rolls out his tongue — bald from the eyebrows up. “Deal with this prophet,” Stellan Skarsgård tells Butler in the second trailer. “Show me who you are.” Watch your back, Oh Chosen One. A completely hairless Elvis is coming for you.

But he doesn’t sound like Elvis anymore!

When the cast stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on February 1, they shared a new clip from the movie, teasing the fight between Paul and Feyd-Rautha, while also finally revealing what Butler’s voice will sound like as the villain. It seems like Butler couldn’t have picked a better gig to finally shake his lingering Elvis Presley dialect. When it comes to playing Feyd-Rautha, there’ll surely be a little less conversation, a little more action.

Who’s in Part Two?

If you watched Dune: Part One, you may remember that the majority of the characters are, in fact, dead. Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster are all dead by gas, combat, and sandworm (respectively). So Villeneuve has padded Dune: Part Two with some pretty well known names. Chalamet, Bardem, Zendaya, and Rebecca Ferguson will all be returning, of course. But Pugh, Butler, Léa Seydoux, Christopher Walken, and, as of the February 15 premiere, Anya Taylor-Joy join the band of science-fiction sisters. Walken will be playing Shaddam IV, the emperor of House Corrino; Pugh will be playing his daughter, Princess Irulan; Seydoux will be Lady Margot, who is one of the emperor’s friends and a member of iconic queens the Bene Gesserit; and Butler will be Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the nephew of Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen. Finally, Tim Blake Nelson plays an as-yet-unnamed character. While Taylor-Joy’s role is not yet confirmed, fans have speculated that she could play Paul’s sister, Alia, an “abomination” with the power to get all up in your mind. “It required so much work to keep that secret,” Villeneuve previously told Entertainment Weekly. “Everybody signed with their blood.”

No, the first look isn’t a spice vision.

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of Dune fans losing their shit over a smorgasbord of stunning Vanity Fair exclusive first-look photos released on April 27. We see Zendaya tenderly caressing Chalamet’s cheek in the middle of the Arrakis desert in one image. In another, his azure contacts, framed by a brown hooded cape and taupe headscarf, are deeper than the ocean. “The universe of Dune is a complex world of geopolitics and with tons of ecological and technological metaphors that hold up today,” Chalamet told Vanity Fair. “But at the center, there’s this relationship where Chani sort of becomes a moral compass … Even to say that out loud feels kind of huge, and she’s really the humanizing, grounding force to that.” The official poster sees the couple armed with jagged swords and framed by an Olafur Eliasson–looking orange sky.

Pugh looks regal in a pearl lace headpiece, while Josh Brolin stands in the fiery remnants of a bloody battle. Skarsgård smokes a pipe in a bathtub, sporting a veiny and offensive fat suit. Standing in some sort of vessel, Seydoux is wearing her version of power dressing: a midnight-blue crêpe gown with a velvet hood. We see Butler’s bald-headed silhouette. “Austin Butler brought to the screen something that would be a cross between a psychotic, sociopath serial killer and Mick Jagger,” Villeneuve said upon the release of the first images.

What’s the plot?

Dune: Part Two will take on the second half of Frank Herbert’s original epic sci-fi novel. The first film left clairvoyant boy-king Paul Atreides (Little Timmy Tim) and his mother (Ferguson) as they joined the Fremen. Luckily, this means that we’ll have more than seven minutes with Zendaya’s Fremen character, Chani.

Further plot and character details were revealed at CinemaCon on April 25. “She’s not just in dreams this time,” Zendaya said about Chani’s larger role in the second film. In Part One, “I only got a small time to find out who she was. These are still two young people who are trying to grow up, fall in love, and leave being a warrior for your people.” Villeneuve described the sequel as an “action-packed, epic war movie,” as opposed to the first film, which was “more of a contemplative movie.” He elaborated: “It is much more dense. We went to all-new locations. I didn’t want a feeling of repetition. It’s all-new sets. Everything is new.” The film was shot entirely in Imax, he revealed.

The Dune 2 trailer that premiered at CinemaCon featured Atreides’s first ride on a sandworm as well as clips of Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino and Butler as the “psychotic” Feyd-Rautha (a fan-made image of Butler as the character made the rounds on Twitter earlier today, but it’s unfortunately not real). A fight scene between Feyd and Paul features in the trailer. “We really see Paul Atreides become a leader,” Chalamet said of his character. “A redeemer of the Fremen people in a sense.”

When is Dune 2 out?

The Dune: Part Two release date is doin’ a lotta movin’. The film was originally slated for release on November 17, 2023, but that premiere was later moved up two weeks to November 3. Why the change? Well, Blade was originally scheduled for November 3, but with that film changing dates because of a director switch-up, Dune: Part Two was free to take the early-November slot. After all, nothing kicks off the holiday season like sandworms. However, amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes,Variety reported that the movie was pushed to March 15, 2024. With the strikes now over, the release date has changed yet again. Per Deadline, Dune: Part Two will drop on March 1, 2024. Third change’s the charm?

This post has been updated.