Denis Villeneuve wanted to return to direct Dune 3 because he's "tired" of the material

It remains to be seen how much the Dune world will expand after Part Three. HBO Max renewed its prequel series Dune: Prophecy for season two, but will there be another film? Frank Herbert wrote six Dune novels, with huge time jumps and increasingly weirder plots. After Herbert’s death, his son, Brian Herbert, continued the series with sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson, writing more prequels, sequels, and even graphic novels. So there’s plenty of material to mine—and Villeneuve would happily pass the reins to another filmmaker. “I think that it would be a good idea for me to make sure that, in Messiah, there are the seeds in the project if someone wants to do something else afterwards, because they are beautiful books,” he told Vanity Fair in 2024. “They are more difficult to adapt. They become more and more esoteric. It’s a bit more tricky to adapt, but I’m not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else.” As for Villeneuve, he already has his next gig lined up: Directing the next installment of the James Bond franchise, which sounds like the ideal palate cleanser. “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,'” he told Empire.