By John Corrado

Warner Bros. has just released the first trailer for Dune: Part Three. This is Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated finale to his sci-fi trilogy, modelled after author Frank Herbert’s much darker second book, Dune: Messiah.

This trailer comes in the wake of star Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar campaign for Marty Supreme, which, ultimately, sadly, did not result in a Best Actor win. The stacked Dune cast also includes the likes of Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh and Rebecca Ferguson, who are all reprising their roles, with Robert Pattinson now joining them.

The film is shaping up to be one of the big Oscar contenders next year, at least in the tech categories, where the first one dominated and the second part did very well. Will they reward it on behalf of the series like fellow third film The Return of the King? The visual style once again looks sweeping, with Linus Sandgren taking over as cinematographer from Greig Fraser, who shot the first two films but stepped away to shoot The Batman Part II. From the images in this trailer, the Oscar-winning Sandgren is absolutely living up to the high bar that Fraser set.

The film opens exclusively in theatres and IMAX on December 18th, the same day as Avengers: Doomsday, despite many predicting it would move. So, Dunesday double features, anyone?