'Dune 3' Cast Defends 'Departures' From Frank Herbert's Books

The cast of Denis Villeneuve's "Dune 3" has confirmed the film takes major "departures" from Frank Herbert's novels, with Robert Pattinson telling critics of the changes: "You got to be kind of crazy if you're going to be picking fault with this one." The trilogy's final installment, drawn heavily from Herbert's 1969 sequel novel "Dune Messiah," opens in theaters Dec. 18 from Warner Bros. and Legendary.

Zendaya, who returns as Chani, set out the balance in an interview with The New York Times. "There's a lot in this film that is very true to the source material, and there are departures," she said.

Pattinson makes his "Dune" debut as Scytale, the shape-shifting Face Dancer of Herbert's fiction. He said the script surprised him. "The script was really cool, but it was quite complicated," he told The Times. "And watching the film, it's not about what I thought it was going to be about at all. It reads as much more of a grand political, moral fable, and the movie is so much more emotional. A lot of it is about parenting, and I just thought it was so moving."

What does the ending do to the trilogy?

Timothée Chalamet, the franchise's Paul Atreides, gave a direct answer when asked whether he was satisfied with Villeneuve's conclusion. "Absolutely. It didn't feel like the bar dropped at all, Denis just changed the location of the bar. This movie is its own thing," Chalamet said.

The cast's comments arrive at the end of a strong year for theatrical box office. "Dune 3" opens opposite Marvel's "Avengers: Doomsday," and the combined weekend is widely expected to become the highest-grossing single weekend in box office history.

Can the franchise keep 'moviegoing' alive?

Florence Pugh, who returns as Princess Irulan, credited the series with reviving cinema attendance after the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes. She pointed to the numbers: the first "Dune" opened day-and-date in theaters and on HBO Max in 2021 and still grossed $410 million worldwide. The 2024 sequel, "Dune: Part Two," received an exclusive theatrical run and earned $714 million.

"What an event the second one was," Pugh told The Times. "It was just so lovely to be a part of something that we know is our generational kind of 'Star Wars.'"

Zendaya framed the stakes in personal terms. "Any opportunity that we have that we can hopefully contribute to the moviegoing experience and keep that alive, because it's so much a part of my life, my childhood, so many people's lives — it's the reason we do it," she said.

The Dec. 18 release, paired with Marvel's rival tentpole, will test whether Villeneuve's literary adaptation can share a record-setting weekend while asking audiences to accept a looser reading of Herbert's text than its predecessors offered.