Denis Villeneuve, the director of Dune (2021) and Dune: Part 2 (2024), expressed his admiration and gratitude for the late David Lynch this past weekend at the Saturn Awards. Lynch, who passed away last month, was a revolutionary filmmaker behind iconic films such as Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. He was also behind the famous TV series Twin Peaks.

Denis Villeneuve was asked about David Lynch since Lynch also directed an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune back in 1984. He said, “Cinema is probably the closest artform, closest to dreams, awakened dreams. And David Lynch was definitely the master, the one who brought us closest to this dream state. And I sincerely wish that I had the chance to meet him. It would’ve not been possible to meet him in between both [Dune] movies. I was wishing and dreaming to meet him once it would be finished just to… to pay homage to him.”

Lynch’s Dune was met with poor reception upon release, with many citing that the problem was that the novel was just too ambitious to bring to the silver screen. Years after the film’s release, Lynch admitted that he did not enjoy working on Dune, and that what we saw in the final product was not what he originally envisioned. Villeneuve commented on this saying, “I’m very sad that he did not have a nice experience with his own adaptation. At the same time, from my understanding, the pain he endured during making his own version of Dune brought to us Blue Velvet, and then Wild at Heart and all the… there was an energy that came out of that.”

Denis Villeneuve seems to have had a much better experience working on Dune than David Lynch did, presumably with less studio interference. The director has gone on the record saying he loves making films, and that it had been a dream of his for decades to adapt the novel. Now, with the entire first novel adapted into two parts, both of which being critically and financially successful, Villeneuve has set his sights on the next novel, Dune: Messiah. He has already started pre-production and aims to “go back behind the camera faster than I think.” The film is currently slated for a 2026 release, but no concrete date has been set yet.