Denis Villeneuve’s Post-Dune Messiah Project Could Be Nuclear War

After the critical and financial success of Dune: Part Two, director Denis Villeneuve can do whatever he wants. What the fans want is Dune Messiah, a third part of his Dune saga. But Villeneuve has made it clear he needs a break from sand for a while. It’s coarse, gets everywhere, etc. So, what’s next?

Unfortunately, we don’t know yet. But, we may now know what he’ll do after Dune Messiah. Deadline reports that Legendary Entertainment has just optioned a new book called Nuclear War: A Scenario for Villeneuve as a project for him to potentially tackle after he completes the third Dune film. Which, we imagine, would be after whatever is next.

Written by Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War is a non-fiction book comprised of interviews with military and civilian experts attempting to paint a picture of what an actual nuclear war, and its fallout, would look like. Villeneuve and Legendary see it as “a chilling cautionary tale about where the world might be headed in an age of political volatility at a time when too many countries have nuclear capabilities.” Basically, a fictionalized version of the non-fiction book.

That this came together after a film about the creation of that bomb, Oppenheimer, won Best Picture, is almost certainly not a coincidence either. You can’t buy that level of popularity and familiarity when developing a project and so the time seems right to show audiences the fake fallout of that true story.

But, again, this is all just speculation with many more variables in between. We still don’t know what Villeneuve is directing next. We still don’t know (for sure) if Dune Messiah is happening. We don’t know when which is happening. And so, who knows what the world, or Villeneuve’s workload, will look like at that time. Either way, Nuclear War as a project sounds both interesting and terrifying.

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