The Fremen descended on CinemaCon, chanting, on Tuesday night — as did Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve to tease Dune: Part Three. To that, they unspooled the film’s first seven minutes.
The clip opens with Fremen ships sailing through dark, gray, foggy air, crashing down on a planet where it’s raining. They chant and say “God be with us” before heading into battle. Lasers fly at them, obliterating many.
Finally, we cut to more of an extended preview of the whole film, where Momoa’s Duncan Idaho tells Chalamet’s Paul Atreides he’s “way beyond redemption” after becoming a destroyer of worlds.
Before airing the footage, Villleneuve joined a Fremen army onstage, where some ascended on wires. He jokingly called them his “entourage” and talked about his intention to make each new Dune movie its own “new cinematic experience.”
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The third and final film in his trilogy, he said, is “a thriller — action-packed, more intense and definitely more emotional.”
His stars then joined him onstage as Villeneuve explained where the story is headed. In the new film, he said, it’s 17 years a later, and “a very different world” where Atreides’ “nightmares became reality” and he’s left to grapple with “the consequences of his decisions.”
The film is “a redemption story,” Villeneuve said. “But still the heartbeat of the film is that love story between Chani and Paul, [albeit] more of a broken love story.”
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Chalamet said Paul has “become his worst vision and he’s struggling to … figure out how to protect those he loves while becoming the all-powerful dark emperor of the universe.”
Zendaya added: “The years don’t seem to have been kind to anyone in Dune. [It’s been] a really difficult, challenging, ungentle and unkind few years,” though there’s “so much left still to fight for.”
She said we’re catching her character, Chani, “at a very different place in her life where that youthful outlook is completely gone.”
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And while Momoa’s character died in Dune: Part One, he’s back this time around through the power of Ghola technology.
Villeneuve told the crowd it was “emotional to say farewell to Paul and Chani in the desert. We became like a small family. It’s like 10 years of our lives.”
Chalamet wrapped things up by calling Villeneuve “the one … the real Paul Atreides.”
Continuing Villeneuve’s adaptation of the Dune novels by Frank Herbert, Dune: Part Three releases December 18.
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