Every empire is built on sand.

Denis Villeneuve brings his sweeping adaptation of Frank Herbert’s saga to a close with Dune: Part Three, arriving at Everyman on 18 December 2026. It’s drawn from Herbert’s second novel, Dune Messiah, and Villeneuve co-wrote it with Brian K. Vaughan.  This final chapter flips the triumph of Part Two on its head and asks what happens after the hero wins.

Seventeen years have passed since Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) seized the throne. He now rules a universe his followers have set ablaze in his name, and he is haunted by visions of collapse while conspiracies tighten around the people he loves most. Zendaya returns as Chani, alongside Florence Pugh as Paul’s wife Irulan, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica and Javier Bardem as Stilgar. Anya Taylor-Joy steps fully into the role of Paul’s unsettling sister, Alia.

The new faces are just as intriguing. Robert Pattinson plays Scytale, a shape-shifting Tleilaxu Face Dancer plotting to bring Paul down. Jason Momoa makes a startling return as Hayt, a ghola grown in the likeness of the fallen Duncan Idaho. Isaach de Bankolé joins as Farok, a Fedaykin veteran who has lost faith in his emperor, and Charlotte Rampling is back as the scheming Reverend Mother Mohiam. Hans Zimmer returns to score.

Part Two ended with a declaration of holy war, and this is the reckoning that follows. Villeneuve has called this instalment tenser and more action-packed than the films before it. Expect a darker, more intimate kind of epic: a story of power, prophecy and the crushing cost of becoming a legend, told on a scale that deserves the biggest screen you can find.

Did you know?

Part Three was shot mostly on 65mm film, a first for the series, after the first two were shot digitally. 

See this if you liked...