While the advertising campaign for them is highly anticipated Dune: Part Two is in full swing, Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve recently revealed news about his next projects in interviews with American media.
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A third part of the Dune saga, a film about Cleopatra, an adaptation of the science fiction novel Rendez-vous avec Rama… Denis Villeneuve, who has been one of the most prominent filmmakers in Hollywood for several years, is not lacking in projects.
The 56-year-old director recently confirmed that work on a third Dune film – an adaptation of the novel The Dune Messiah – is almost complete. He also told Time magazine that it would be the last film in the saga that he would direct.
But if we go by what he said last December, Denis Villeneuve might be tempted to make one more film before diving back into the world of Dune.
“To keep my sanity, I might do something in between [le deuxième et le troisième Dune]he said during a pre-Christmas press conference in South Korea.
From dune has Cleopatra
We know that Denis Villeneuve is developing two other film projects in addition to the third part of Dune. One of them is an adaptation of Stacy Schiff's book Cleopatra, a portrait of the last queen of Egypt. Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917) was recently hired to write the screenplay for the film.
Villeneuve has also been involved for three years in a project to adapt Rendez-vous avec Rama, the iconic science fiction novel by author Arthur C. Clarke (2001, A Space Odyssey).
The plot of Rendezvous with Rama is set in the year 2130 and revolves around the appearance of a mysterious cylindrical object hurtling towards the sun at 10,000 km/h. The film is produced by Alcon Entertainment, the American company with which the Quebec filmmaker collaborated on his first Hollywood film, Prisoners, released in 2013.
It is unclear which of these two ambitious projects will come to fruition first. In the meantime, the film Dune: Part II will be released here on March 1st.