See Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya & More in New Dune Images

Yesterday we shared this first look at Timothée Chalamet in Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune, courtesy of Vanity Fair. Now VF has published their deep dive into Warner Bros. upcoming sci-fi epic, and the spread and is a doozy. It features new images of Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya and more from Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 sci-fi novel, as well as a great story from writer Anthony Breznican about the film’s equally epic production.

For fans of Herbert’s novel (they are legion), this is the second shot at a proper, big-time adaptation. Experimental filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky took a shot to adapt it in the 70s, but the film fell apart when producers got spooked. Then none other than David Lynch brought Dune to the big screen in 1984. While the film exhibited a lot of Lynch’s gifts with visual storytelling and his fearlessness in leading viewers into the deeper, darker realms of the human (and alien) psyche, it was not well received. There was a Dune miniseries on SyFy in 2000, but it’s been largely forgotten. Enter Villeneuve, who might just be the perfect person to try and wrangle Herbert’s epic into a good film.

Villeneuve is accustomed to high expectations. His Blade Runner 2049 was a beautifully rendered, emotional follow-up to Ridley Scott’s iconic 1982 original. With Arrival, he crafted one of the most striking, soulful sci-fi films of the past decade. Yet Dune is an entirely different beast. A tale of prophecy, betrayal, and murder, dealing with an interstellar trade war and based on a dense, nearly 900-page novel, Villeneuve, his cast and his crew had their work cut out for them.

The Vanity Fair spread gives us not only gorgeous images from the film, but also takes us on a tour of the production, from the granite canyons of southern Jordan to the deserts outside of Abu Dhabi. Both locations were used to capture the story’s central location, the deadly planet of Arrakis. In Herbert’s novel, Arrakis is the only source in the entire universe for the crucial resource “spice,” the element that powerful noble houses will war over in the film. Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, a young royal who arrives on Arrakis to protect his family’s interests. He will be outnumbered, both by humans committed to destroying him, and the planet’s native, murderous sandworms, the rulers of the Arrakis’s vast, burrow-infested hinterlands.

Villeneuve has broken Herbert’s epic into two parts, and Warner Bros. has agreed to tell the entire story in two films. (They did this same thing with Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It.) “I would not agree to make this adaptation of the book with one single movie,” Villeneuve told VF. “The world is too complex. It’s a world that takes its power in details.”

To get a sense of the magnitude of this cinematic undertaking, we recommend you check out the story, and the images, here.

Featured image: Caption: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures