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?
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.
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.
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.
There can also be other, less predictable upsides to putting some distance between entries in a big franchise, even if Dune: Part Two’s March release date wasn’t a purely strategic decision. Since Part One was released three years ago, the movie’s already buzzy cast has gone supernova. Zendaya—who has a much bigger role in Part Two—is an even bigger star today, thanks to the ballooning ratings of Euphoria and the record-breaking grosses of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which left Dune: Part One in the proverbial dust upon release. Timothée Chalamet is currently enjoying a huge visibility boost from Wonka, one of the few genuine smashes of the past few months. And besides those two headliners, Part Two packs the margins of its starry cast with other actors who have leveled up since 2021, including Austin Butler and Florence Pugh, who have not only become Oscar nominees but, via either tortured accent work or well-deployed Aperol spritzes, also blossomed into internet darlings.
The inability of those actors to promote Dune: Part Two this past autumn is the reason the movie moved to March; Warner’s decision to abandon its original October release date has to be considered one of the biggest aftershocks of the SAG-AFTRA strikes. Dune: Part Two would have cleaned up in the fall, handing Hollywood a much-needed smash and joining Barbie and Oppenheimer as the 2023 films that signaled a revived interest in going to the movies. Now, however, it isn’t difficult to argue that Part Two is even better off coming out in March. There are no Marvel movies, Hunger Games prequels, or similarly scaled historical epics opening anytime soon; Deadpool 3 is slated for the end of July. You have to turn back the pages on your calendar to find the last major movie release—2024 has instead been defined by medium hits (Mean Girls), minor delights (The Beekeeper), and movies that are so bad they must be seen to be believed (Argylle, Madame Web). Pushing Dune: Part Two a few months didn’t just goose anticipation; it landed it in a less competitive market, and at a time when the American moviegoing public is suddenly very hungry for the next big movie.
In fact, the release-date swap may have given Dune weeks of runway it wouldn’t have otherwise had. There’s arguably nothing else of comparable scope and budget opening between now and May. This is the blockbuster event of the whole season. And if it ends up looking like the blockbuster event of the year, that’s partially because the strikes also delayed many of the bigger productions that might have gunned for that title. Marvel Studios and DC each have only a single movie on the docket for the rest of 2024. And most other major franchises are between entries, pushing deadlines and eyeing the greener pastures of 2025. (That Disney has essentially reworked a Moana TV series into a feature film headed to theaters this Thanksgiving provides a good sense of how open the calendar currently is.)
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Dune: Part Two could also benefit, in an indirect way, from the halo effect of a rival company’s movie, Oppenheimer. While the two films don’t share much creative overlap beyond Pugh’s presence in a supporting role, they occupy a similar circle of the event-movie sphere as long, ambitious, star-studded works from directors who have become something close to household names. Those looking for a true big-screen vision à la Oppenheimer—the type of movie that all but demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, unlike so many of the streaming-ready Hollywood products of the moment—can find it in Dune. Certainly, nothing else since Christopher Nolan’s movie has felt more worthy of the IMAX or 70mm upcharge, or more primed to capitalize on a growing interest in the large gauge.
But if Dune: Part Two does as well as the industry thinks it will, maybe there’s a more primal explanation for why. Last year saw so many major franchises flame out as interest in the hit IP of the past seemed to simultaneously wane on a mass level. Meanwhile, the joint phenomenon that was Barbenheimer implied a universal thirst for something new. Given its mid-’60s source material, Dune might seem like an ironic answer to that craving; both in actuality and in the way its ideas have run through decades of sci-fi movies, it’s old enough to be called institutional. But millions of moviegoers are new to the world of Dune. To them, it’s something Hollywood hasn’t provided in far too long: a fresh mythology to disappear into, and a new pop-culture obsession not yet run into the sand.
A.A. Dowd is a writer and editor based in Chicago. His work has appeared in such publications as The A.V. Club, Vulture, and Rolling Stone. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics.