While the rise of director Denis Villeneuve in recent years has proved that he’s an adept genre-hopper, he’s already made an indelible impression in the science-fiction arena. Between Arrival’s deeply emotive ruminations on grief and connection, and the sheer miracle of pulling off Blade Runner 2049 (let alone the fact that it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Ridley Scott’s original), he's shown he can do masterful things with the genre. Next comes his most ambitious feat: bringing Frank Herbert’s Dune to the big screen in a star-studded adaptation shot in epic natural landscapes. It’s set to be a game-changer – and we have a brand new image from the film, as seen in the upcoming new Celebration Of Cinema issue of Empire.
That’s Timothée Chalamet playing protagonist Paul Atreides, balancing on an airborne ornithopter, flying over the expanse of the planet Arrakis with Josh Brolin’s weapons teacher Gurney Halleck – and it’s a pivotal moment for the young warrior. “It’s Paul’s first contact with the deep desert, where he’s mesmerised by it,” Villeneuve tells Empire. “He has a strange feeling of being home. There’s a lot of action at this specific moment, and [it’s] one of the scenes in the movie that I’m starting to get pretty proud of.”
Read more about Dune in the new issue of Empire, arriving on Thursday 14 May. Order online here, or purchase a digital copy via the Empire Magazine app on iOS and Android.