How ‘Dune: Part Two’ Became the Movie Event of 2024

Three years ago it wasn’t even a guarantee that ‘Dune’ would get a Part Two, but the stars have aligned in a fascinating way since then

Right now, the American multiplex looks as barren and hopeless as the deserts of Arrakis. Not a single bona fide hit has emerged since Christmas—and you have to go back a few more holidays, to the October debut of Five Nights at Freddy’s, to find a movie that’s opened higher than $50 million. But a glimmer of hope for Hollywood has appeared on the horizon. This Friday, the drought will almost certainly end—thanks to the belated release of a genuine blockbuster event, shimmering like an oasis of box office bankability. And if the presales, projections, reviews, and general din of excitement are to be believed, it could be more than just the first hit of the year or the biggest movie of the spring. 2022 belonged to Top Gun: Maverick, 2023 to Barbie and Oppenheimer. Will 2024 be the year of Dune?

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Not so long ago, this would have seemed far-fetched—a future that only the Kwisatz Haderach could have seen coming. We’re talking, after all, about a nearly three-hour adaptation of a cultishly revered, densely plotted science-fiction door stopper. For all its influence on generations of beloved fantasies (including, of course, the ultimate populist space opera, Star Wars), Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel is not exactly a model of traditional popcorn entertainment. Its feudal intrigue—as dry as the central setting—has historically appealed to genre wonks with a high tolerance for mythology and terminology, not to the moviegoing hoi polloi. Just ask the suits at Universal, who tried to parlay Herbert’s book into a post–Star Wars hit in the mid-’80s, just to find themselves saddled with a David Lynch anti-blockbuster.

Even when Warner Bros. gambled that a hit could be made from Dune, the studio hedged its bets: While it’s become standard practice to shoot multipart installments of a franchise back-to-back, director Denis Villeneuve was initially able to secure a green light for only half of his proposed two-part adaptation of the novel, with the completion of the story contingent on audience interest. There’s a world where we got just one new Dune movie this decade. And that would be a very strange movie, given the unresolved cliff-hanger on which Dune: Part One stubbornly, presumptuously ends.

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But that’s not the world we know. Villeneuve’s sweeping, brutalist take on Herbert was a box office success—not a huge one, but big enough, especially given that the movie was able to drum up $108 million domestically during a pandemic, and even though it was released nearly simultaneously on HBO Max. The sequel is now poised to do even better, with some predicting that Dune: Part Two could come close to surpassing its predecessor’s stateside earnings over a single weekend. This mostly faithful plot machine of galactic politics and surreal mysticism—full of mutant aristocrats, sandworm-riding space tribes, and a mind-altering, spaceship-powering energy source called spice—is the blockbuster to beat this year and the most anticipated moviegoing event of 2024.

So much had to align for Dune mania. But the most important factor is also the simplest: Plenty of people loved Part One. The movie may not have topped the charts of 2021 when it hit both theaters and streaming, but it certainly amassed a fan base through critical acclaim, multiple Oscar nominations (and wins), and good old-fashioned word of mouth. If Dune was still primarily a cult object three years ago, it’s gone mainstream since, winning over neophytes—the folks who wouldn’t know Duncan Idaho from Gurney Halleck—as surely as the Lord of the Rings movies and Game of Thrones series converted fantasy newcomers. Looking back further, Dune: Part Two could be taking the Terminator route to exponential growth: As people have continued to catch up with the first film on streaming (the way folks once turned James Cameron’s modest theatrical hit into a giant VHS sensation), demand for the second grows.

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That Part One builds to a blatant ellipsis is arguably a creative liability—it’s undeniably half of a movie, not so much ending as just stopping with a glorified “to be continued.” But that blatant bifurcation of the story, which certainly resulted in something more coherent than Lynch’s version, will probably pay off handsomely for Part Two. Even those who didn’t love Villeneuve’s opening chapter will likely feel some hunger to see how he resolves the desert odyssey of Paul Atreides. Call it the Avengers: Endgame bump. Or maybe the Star Wars effect. Three years, after all, was the same amount of time George Lucas made the world wait for the resolution of his downbeat cliff-hanger; to keep the fate of Han Solo hovering for that long only further satiated appetites with Return of the Jedi.