Dune Featurette Teases A Wildly Ambitious Sci-Fi Epic

If you've got three minutes to spare and an abiding interest in "Dune" (not to mention an abiding love for the music of Pink Floyd), there's a new featurette out, which gives us a look at some fresh "Dune" footage. It also gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of Denis Villeneuve's much-anticipated film adaptation of the classic Frank Herbert science-fiction novel. And yes, there's a cover of "Eclipse" from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" featured. 

Might I suggest calling it "Dark Side of the Dune?"

Dave Bautista, Jason Momoa, and other talented actors like Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Timothée Chalamet, and Josh Brolin are all on hand to hype up "Dune" in the featurette above.

Villeneuve has called "Dune" the "toughest thing" he's ever done. Here, he also calls it the "most ambitious" film project he's ever mounted.

"When your director wants to keep it as grounded and practical as possible, that's a gift because it feels like you'll be able to feed off your environment and bring the scene to life," says Chalamet, the star of "Dune."

I can't claim to have seen every piece of marketing material for the movie, but I feel reasonably certain this featurette has some new shots in it that weren't shown in any of the previous trailers. There are dragonfly-esque Ornithopters buzzing across the desert, and speaking of "Dune" as a whole, Isaac calls the experience "pure cinema."

What's most interesting is seeing some of production designer Patrice Vermette's concept art bleed into corresponding live-action moments. Vermette says that he and Villeneuve started with an illustration book so that the actors would know what "Dune" was going to look like. Cinematographer Greig Fraser talks about the movie's size and scale and says they "built sets to the edges of the stages."

This left actors like David Dastmalchian in awe as they walked onto the stages. Momoa touches on Villeneuve's lifelong interest in "Dune," and Villeneuve himself calls the movie "a love letter to the big screen." He says that's "the way it was dreamed," designed, and achieved, "and that's the way I hope people will experience it."

"Dune" makes its theatrical and HBO Max debut on October 22, 2021.

Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, only those who can conquer their own fear will survive.