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Was Dune a box office success?

Dune 2 just surpassed $400 million in box office receipts. An unexpected success?

Unveiled last September in France, Dunes has largely convinced critics and spectators. So much so that the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novels by Denis Villeneuve was offered a second opus, while it was a long time to be won in advance. 5 months after this release to great fanfare, the film with Timothée Chalamet has just reached an important stage. Warner Bros has indeed announced that it has exceeded $400 million in revenue.

A great performance at the end of the pandemic which paralyzed the 7th art for several months, and which prevented several feature films from achieving very good scores at the box office. This is all the more true since Dune is not what one might call mainstream. To compare, blade runner 2049 only raised $259.3 million when it was released in 2017.

A chance after Blade Runner 2049

Guest of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Denis Villeneuve also confided in this commercial failure. “The miracle for me after Blade Runner 2049 is that I can still make movies. I put myself in danger artistically speaking. As Christopher Nolan told me, it was like walking on sacred territory.”

If the director’s film was widely appreciated by critics, it never managed to find its audience. Too ambitious? According to him, it is above all the place that Blade Runner holds in the hearts of the fans which is at the origin of this disenchantment. “With Blade Runner, I had to be respectful of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. Here (with Dune editor’s note) it’s totally different. I deal with the pressure of the dreams I had as a teenager. This teenager in me is totalitarian and I had to conform to his dreams. It was the biggest challenge”.

Filming begins this summer

Dunes 2 moving forward at high speed. One year after the release of the film, the teams will return to the film sets this summer. He tells Empire: “I would say he is overall ready. He’s supposed to shoot by the end of the summer. I am confident, the only unknown in this equation is for the moment the pandemic”.

Let’s hope that the current situation will continue, or even improve, so that this vast project does not fall behind schedule. Especially since Denis Villeneuve said he wanted to make more than one other feature film, he plans to direct a trilogy. The second part should immerse us just after the end of the first opus, when Paul Astreides joined the Fremen. According to the director, it will also be a question of taking a closer look at the Harkonnens, and mainly the character played by Dave Bautista.

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