The moment Paul Atreides stepped onto the planet Arrakis in Dune, he was destined to change. Arriving as an idealistic teenager to the Spice-rich des
The moment Paul Atreides stepped onto the planet Arrakis in Dune, he was destined to change. Arriving as an idealistic teenager to the Spice-rich desert, he soon faced the harsh realities of life: the death of his father, in a coup from the Harkonnens that drove the surviving Atreides from their home, before taking a transformative trip into the immense dunes, where he forged an uneasy alliance with the Fremen, and a romantic attachment to Zendaya’s Chani. And then, Paul really changed; drinking the Water Of Life, transcending his human consciousness, overthrowing Emperor Shaddam IV, and ascending the throne. In Dune: Part Three – the final part of Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy – the weight of Paul’s transformation will come to bear. Everything has changed.
“The idea was to try to make a movie that will have the same DNA — it’s a Dune movie — but it’s a very different movie,” Villeneuve tells Empire in our world-exclusive Dune: Part Three issue. “It has a different pacing.” It’s not just Paul that’s different – set 17 years after Part Two, he has spent the intervening time exerting his terrifying power as Emperor, re-shaping the galaxy. “We are back with the same characters, but this time the world has totally changed,” says Villeneuve. “Their psyches, their perspective on reality has totally changed, and Paul is living with the burden of what he created, trying to find a way out of this spiral of violence.”
For Chalamet, it offered a chance to evolve Paul Atreides in all-new ways, continuing his descent into darkness. “That phrase ‘anti-hero’ gets thrown around a little too loosely perhaps, but it’s fantastic to chew on as an actor, where it’s not purely redemptive,” he tells Empire. Part Three, he notes, is “its own beast. It’s its own story, its own siege, its own hail of paranoid isolation.”
It was always going to end here for Villeneuve, adapting Frank Herbert’s sequel novel Dune: Messiah for Part Three. Having been firmly in the world of Spice, space and sandworms for three back-to-back movies, it was the right time for the filmmaker to bring the story home. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s a good idea to go back to this project, not out of nostalgia, not because I miss it, but the opposite — I’m tired of it,’” he says. “I want to make sure that I will be severe with the material. That I will not be complacent.” Next up? 007 awaits… “I thought, ‘When it’s done, I need a very powerful rocket to pull me away from Arrakis.’ When I was asked to do the next Bond, I said: ‘Okay, this is what I need.’” Mission: accomplished.
Read Empire’s full Dune: Part Three cover story – speaking to Denis Villeneuve, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Pattinson, Jason Momoa, and Florence Pugh about the epic final chapter – in the December 2026 issue, on sale Thursday October 22. Pre-order a copy online here. Dune: Part Three comes to cinemas from December 18.
