Timothée Chalamet Says Dune 3 Shares Epic DNA With Interstellar And The Dark Knight
Timothée Chalamet finally breaks his silence on Dune 3, calling it the eeriest chapter yet and likening its scope and tone to Interstellar and The Dark Knight. In a conversation with Matthew McConaughey, he teases a recalibrated Paul Atreides as Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy reaches theaters this December.
Timothee Chalamet just gave the clearest hint yet about where Dune 3 is headed: weirder, darker, and more of a swing than anything this series has tried. The final chapter of Denis Villeneuve's trilogy hits theaters in December, and Chalamet sounds like he went for it with Paul Atreides.
The curveball he almost compared to other legends
In a chat with Matthew McConaughey, Chalamet started to line up Dune 3's tone alongside a few heavy hitters — think Interstellar, Heath Ledger's Joker, and Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now — then immediately pumped the brakes. He was making a point about ambition, not trying to put himself on their mountaintop.
'I cannot put myself in that same boat... Let’s just say, it’s these big movies where you could sneak in something. A curveball.'
Translation: expect a studio epic with room for something unexpected.
'The eeriest one'
Chalamet kept circling back to how much he and Villeneuve locked in on this shoot. The collaboration felt looser, the creative handoffs smoother, and the movie itself? He is not pretending it plays safe.
'It’s the eeriest one. It’s a big swing.'
That lines up with where Paul was left at the end of Part Two — and suggests Part Three leans into the stranger, more unsettling corners of his rise.
Oscar Isaac set the tone
Chalamet says Oscar Isaac's approach as Duke Leto in the first film stuck with him. Watching Isaac lean into the heightened, almost theatrical flavor of this world gave Chalamet permission to stop worrying about naturalism and take more liberty with Paul this time out.
From intimidated to unlocked
The first Dune's scale threw him a little, especially coming off smaller, more grounded work like Beautiful Boy and Call Me by Your Name. By Part Three, that intimidation was gone, replaced by a sense of play inside Villeneuve's world-building.
'All the great shit you see on screen is from freedom of movement and freedom of choice.'
We will see how that freedom lands when Villeneuve closes his trilogy in theaters this December. If they are really throwing a curveball, I am all for it.