Regular listeners of either the Empire or Pilot TV podcasts will know that our James Dyer is something of a fan of both Dune (all together now: "Duuuuuune!") and game adaptation The Last Of Us. Imagine, then, the noises that might emerge when he learns that Last Of Us co-showrunner Craig Mazin worked on the Dune: Part Two script.
Talking with Happy Sad Confused podcast host Josh Horowitz, Mazin revealed that Dune: Part Two director Denis Villeneuve had asked him to do some work on the script the filmmaker had written with Jon Spaihts.
"I'm out of the movie business, basically," he said. "I'll work with certain directors when they call because I love them and because they're so brilliant, so if, like, Denis Villeneuve calls, then absolutely. I'm there for, three-four weeks, a month, to work on what you're working on."
It used to be that such work went uncredited, but thanks to a shift in Writers Guild of America policy last year, there is now such a thing as Additional Literary Material credit. "I am a participating writer in Dune: Part Two," he says. "I came in and did a little bit of work."
Dune: Part Two, which recently put a trailer online, follows the aftermath of Timothée Chalamet's Paul Atreides winning a fight to lead the Fremen and walk off into the sunrise with mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and dream girl (literally) Chani (Zendaya), after his home and family were torn apart by the evil Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård).
The new movie will track his rise to lead the fight back against his enemies. It'll ride a giant sand worm into cinemas on 3 November.