Denis Villeneuve hates dialogue: “Cinema has been corrupted by television”

“Simply image and sound, that’s the power of cinema,” considers the director of Dune.

Home stretch of promotion for the team Dune 2which is under pressure: after weeks of box office at half mast, the blockbuster of Denis Villeneuve East particularly expected, especially in the United States. The Canadian filmmaker and his actors speak with enthusiasm about this sequel, which is also receiving good reviews, and they are already talking about a third adaptation of the literary universe of Frank Herbert: a film derived from Messiah of Dune.

Interviewed by the British version of The Times, Villeneuve returned to the making of this saga, and spoke at greater length about his love of cinema. For example, he explained that as a filmmaker he seeks stories that convey more emotion through image and sound than through dialogue.

“Honestly, I hate dialogue, says the director of First contact And Blade Runner 2049. The dialogues are for theater and television. I never remember a film for a good line, but for a strong image. I’m not interested in the dialogue at all. Simply image and sound, that’s the power of cinema, but it’s something that’s not so obvious when you watch films these days. Movies have been corrupted by television.”

“Because there was a golden age of TV series and producers are trying to copy that success?” then asks the interviewer. “Exactly, adds Villeneuve. In a perfect world, I would shoot an entire film that didn’t feel like an experiment, but didn’t have any speaking. The audience would leave the cinema saying to themselves: ‘Hey, there was no dialogue’but without having felt its absence during the projection.”

The director then continues by returning to his own experience, aborted, on a television series : he once tried to adapt Jo Nesbo’s novel, The Sonwith his favorite actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Prisoners, Enemy…). He planned to make a mini-series as dark as the book for HBO, but after several months working on this adaptation, he revealed that he would not film it, judging that the serial format was not for him.

“It’s a project that I really like, he explains to Times. I loved this novel. He is a great author, very solid. The thing is, I suggested making a mini-series so as not to lose anything from the book, I was afraid it would be too much for just one film. But in the end, I felt that the adaptation we made from it, although with excellent storylines, was far removed from my sensibilities.”

Excluded – “Dune 2 is a monster, a much more muscular film”

About Dunedivided into two parts for the moment, and undoubtedly soon into three, he confirms being interested in the making of a complete trilogybut says he doesn’t want to rush anything: “Of course we want to make a third film, but I don’t want to go too quickly. The danger in Hollywood is that people get excited and only think about release dates, not to quality.”

He does not mention the Warner Bros. project. to decline the universe of Dune in a television series. Initially attached to this show, The Sisterhood, recently retitled Dune: Prophecy, he finally moved away, and his current comments on the series allow us to better understand why Denis Villeneuve is so attached to the cinema medium. A duo of showrunners, Diane Ademu-John (The Originals) And Alison Schapker (Altered Carbon), succeeded Jon Spaihts (co-writer of Dune) and Dana Calvo to write this prequel which will be carried by Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), Indira Varma (Game Of Thrones) or Travis Fimmel (Vikings). Villeneuve had considered directing his pilot, but withdrew from the project to concentrate on the second part of Duneand it is ultimately Alison Schapker who is the sole director of this show planned on Max this fall.

Before shooting the third part of Dune, Denis Villeneuve would like to film another project. Maybe his blockbuster on Cleopatra? Or his sci-fi film Rendezvous with Rama, which he has been trying to adapt for several years? Unless he is soon hired on a James Bond ? Once his trilogy Dune closed, he in any case announced thathe would hand over to another director if Warner Bros wanted to continue the saga…

Here is the trailer for A second partwhich comes out this Wednesday in cinemas:

Denis Villeneuve: “Young people like to see long films”