In October 2021, director Denis Villeneuve of Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049 fame proved to the world that it was, in fact, possible to successfully adapt Frank Herbert’s 1965 best-selling novel Dune. So good that audiences will see if Villeneuve’s Dune will win the Oscar for the coveted best picture category later this month at the 94th Academy Awards. Not only that but the second part of the epic story of Dune is set to be released on October 20th, 2023. With all of this in mind, it is safe to say that Denis Villeneuve has his work cut out for him. Even if his adaptation of Dune does not win the coveted Oscar for best picture, its blockbuster success has ensured that it will be both a market and an audience for future movies.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Whether there will be future movies after Dune: Part II is released depends entirely on Villeneuve, the production team, and the studio. They may decide that they have had enough after Dune: Part II and move on to bigger and better things. Even if more franchise films are made, there is no guarantee that Villeneuve will return to direct, as while he may have made a sequel to the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, he typically does not return for sequels.

Regardless, one thing consistently true with entertainment is that as long as a consistent level of quality remains, there will always be an audience willing and eager to be entertained. With the world of Dune, however, if this is the path taken, the biggest challenge the eventual series may face will not only be maintaining a consistent level of quality but knowing when to stop making Dune movies.

How Many Films Could Be Made?

     Warner Bros. Pictures

Spin-offs and prequel novels aside, there are eight books in the main epic saga of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and all of them are just as thick as the last. These books are in order: 1965’s Dune (on which the current movies are based), 1969’s Dune Messiah, 1976’s Children of Dune, 1981’s God Emperor of Dune, 1984’s Heretics of Dune, 1985’s Chapterhouse: Dune, 2006’s Hunters of Dune, and finally 2007’s Sandworms of Dune.

Even with all of these books, however, only the first six were written by Frank Herbert himself, with Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune being written long after his death in 1986 by his son Brian Herbert and fellow science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson. The books are based on notes discovered many years after Frank Herbert’s death. Not only that, but remember that Villeneuve wisely decided to split his adaptation of the original 1965 classic into two parts because there was simply too much story to tell for one movie. If this trend continues for adaptations of the sequels, the future could likely hold possibly sixteen or more films in the Dune universe.

Needless to say, there is enough source material to keep a Dune franchise going for a long, long time. This is by no stretch of the imagination a bad thing, yet it is entirely possible that a franchise based on Dune could outlive its oldest fans and possibly even some of its actors. Not only that, but the books get more and more bizarre throughout the series with new concepts and powers that only make sense within the world of Dune itself. An example of this is one of Paul Atreides’s children turning into a giant sandworm with a human face and ruling the planet Arakis as a god-emperor. To say that the story gets weird would be an understatement, and this would be a fact that both producers and the general audience would need to accept if more movies are to be made.

How Many Films Should Be Made?

     Universal Pictures

As Jeff Goldblum’s character Ian Malcolm said in the 1993 classic Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” This needs to be at the forefront of the minds of producers and anyone who wishes to continue the Dune franchise into more movies simply based on the success of Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first book. Sure there is plenty of source material to work with but remember that he split his adaptation of the first book into two parts, each of which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. This means that more films will be made only if they make consistent returns.

While this might not seem like a problem at first, it will eventually become one farther down the line, especially since fans of the original novels agree that the books do become weirder and generally not as good later on. Not only that, but the book series does get, for lack of a better term, Game of Thrones-ey with beloved characters brutally dying and being replaced by brand-new ones only for them to eventually die so that the process can repeat itself. So there will eventually be a point where all the characters that audiences came to the movies to see will no longer be present.

If more Dune movies are to be made, “When is it time to stop?” will eventually need to be answered.