What the future holds for the future of the Dune franchise is unclear, as there is plenty of source material for filmmakers to work from even beyond what’s being used for the HBO series Dune: Prophecy, but one thing is for sure: the upcoming Dune: Part 3 will be the end of a planned trilogy from director Denis Villeneuve and feature the final performance by Timothée Chalamet as complicated protagonist Paul Atreides. Following the epic adventure in its two blockbuster predecessors, it feels crazy that we are now less than a year away from seeing the story’s conclusion – but that reality definitely takes shape reading Chalamet’s most recent comments about the upcoming 2026 movie.
The actor spoke about the anticipated film during a on-stage conversation with Matthew McConaughey at Variety and CNN’s town hall event at the University of Texas at Austin, and one thing he stressed was the significance of the movie being a conclusion. He explained that knowing Dune: Part 3 is the end of a significant arc was something very much in mind during production late last year, and it stopped him from ever feeling like he was getting too comfortable in his character. Said the on-screen Emperor,
I didn’t want to be complacent about a single moment. Everything was sacred, and it was my last time doing a Dune film, so I really wanted to treat it as sacred. Because people can get complacent, but I was more intense on the third one. It felt like that was the natural momentum, so I wanted to push against that as hard as I could.
It’s an interesting comment if not only because there is plenty in the source material alone that could have been perceived as a significant challenge for the actor – not even including the time jump that is part of the story. Dune: Part 3 is based on the Frank Herbert-authored novel Dune Messiah, which is set a dozen years after the end of Dune and finds the Emperor Paul Atreides as the target of a conspiracy involving a sleeper agent in the form of his resurrected mentor, Duncan Idaho. All the while, the intergalactic jihad he launched is still rampaging and he must juggle his delicate relationships with Irulan (his wife via political arrangement) and Chani (his true love).
On top of all that material, how did Timothée Chalamet take his work to the next level? He did so by fully embedding himself in the world of Dune and exploring it in greater detail than he did in the previous two movies:
On the first Dune, we had an ornithopter sequence that I got a chance to do again in the third, but this time I was way more geared up. On Dune 3, as opposed to the first movie, I came out early and studied the control panel — all sorts of hieroglyphics and things that aren’t tethered to reality. I wanted to know what each button did, and invent a dynamic for myself with it.
Knowing what ultimately happens to Paul in the story (no spoilers!), I can only imagine what Chalamet’s head space was like as he performed the character’s final scenes in the film.
Also starring Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, Nakoa-Wolf Momoa, Ida Brooke and Robert Pattison, Dune: Part 3 wrapped production last November (a near five-month adventure for the cast and crew), and the blockbuster is going to be spending almost this entire year in post-production leading up to the film’s release date on December 18. It will probably be a while before we get our first look at the movie, but to say it’s one of CinemaBlend’s most anticipated titles of 2026 borders on understatement, so you can be sure that you’ll be able to find plenty to read about the work here on the site in the coming months.