Chalamet signed on and got Dune done
Dune might not have been made if Timothée Chalamet hadn't agreed to play Paul Atreides, Denis Villeneuve says.
The Quebec-born director's adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic sees the 25-year-old actor in the leading role, and the filmmaker, 53, has admitted they had no “Plan B” when it came to casting another actor.
Speaking to Total Film magazine, Villeneuve said: “We said, `It's Timothée (Chalamet).' We didn't have a Plan B. Honestly, if he had said no, I don't know what I would have done. There would be no Dune, maybe.”
Meanwhile, co-writer Eric Roth recently teased that the upcoming movie will be “spectacular.” The 76-year-old screenwriter contributed to the script and found his experience on the project — which features an ensemble cast also including Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista — to be “wonderful.”
Roth said: “(Working on Dune), was wonderful. I'd done some work for Denis on Arrival and we became kind of soulmates. And so when Dune came along, he asked me if I would approach it.
“And I did, and I wrote a big, full, overwritten Eric Roth draft that had certain things special to me. It needed to be, honestly, cut down and sort of harnessed, and Denis did some of that, and they eventually brought in a writer named Jon Spaihts, who is a wonderful writer, who I think kept it grounded.
“But I think it's really pretty spectacular. He's a visionary of his own kind, Denis.”
Roth also confirmed that Dune — which was adapted for the big screen by David Lynch in 1984 — takes inspiration from only the first half of Herbert's book.
“It's completely the first half. Yeah. 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. But I've seen the film, it's pretty much the first half.”