I'm 76 years old, and these things obviously take a long time to do.

'I a treatment to show the estate what we could do with the second half, but I've got to tell you that I think I've done as much as I can do. Roth though remains hopeful that Villeneuve will get to complete the arc, though the esteemed writer is unlikely to be involved. Planning a franchise when you have no idea how the first installment will be received is a risky game, and, of course, could result in Dune feeling like unfinished business should the worst come to the worst. But I've seen the film, it's pretty much the first half.' I didn't know when we started, so I think I adapted a little more than the first half and started going into the second half of the book.

He's a visionary of his own kind, Denis.'įans of the Frank Herbert novel have worried how Villeneuve would bring the vast story to life in just one movie (causing many to suffer flashbacks to director David Lynch's 1984 effort) with Roth now confirming what everyone had suspected Dune is just the first half. I don't want to say Lord of the Rings, but I think it's really pretty spectacular. It needed to be, honestly, cut down and sort of harnessed, and Denis did some of that, and they eventually brought in a writer - I was busy, so they brought in a writer named Jon Spaihts, who is a wonderful writer, who I think kept it grounded. And I did, and I wrote a big, full, overwritten Eric Roth draft that had certain things special to me. And so when Dune came along, he asked me if I would approach it. I'd done some work for Denis on Arrival and we became kind of a little bit of soulmates. Roth recently teased their approach to adapting the seminal novel, describing the movie as 'really spectacular.'

Thanks to familiar series of delays and pushbacks, it feels like we have been waiting forever to see director Denis Villeneuve adaptation of Dune, but writer Eric Roth is here to keep the hype train chugging along, comparing the upcoming sci-fi franchise starter to one of the most beloved trilogies of all time.

Dune remake