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Dune 2020: Watch The First Trailer

Oscar Isaac, Timothee Chalamet, and Zendaya star in the upcoming Dune movie.

37 Comments

Things are still relatively uncertain with film release dates pushing into the back half of the year--Wonder Woman 84 is reportedly in position to bump Dune out of its set release date of December 18, pushing it to 2021. But be that as it may, we've still been given the very first trailer for the new movie from Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049). For now we're going to hold out hope that it will see the light of day before the new year.

Until now, we've only had a small handful of stills and behind-the-scenes photos to work with when it came to getting a sense of what Villeneuve's Dune might look like, but our days of speculating have finally come to a close. The first trailer for Dune has arrived and you can take a look at it below. After that, be sure to check out our Dune trailer breakdown and rundown on all of Dune's characters.

The trailer showcases the core Dune cast, including Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto, and Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. It explores some moments that will no doubt be familiar to fans of the franchise in any of its incarnations--like the Gom Jabbar Test Of Humanity and the terrifying sandworms that prowl the wasteland of Arrakis. We even get a very brief look at some of the evil Harkonnens, led by Stellan Skarsgard's Baron Vladamir and Dave Bautista's Glossu Raban.

For the uninitiated, the world of Dune can be pretty intimidating--it's densely packed with tricky, complicated lore and focuses on a near-Shakespearean revenge plot between two warring families--House Atreides and House Harkonnen--as they try to outmaneuver one another politically. The novel series includes six main books and 13 different prequels and sequels.

Villeneuve's Dune is the third (completed) attempt at adapting Frank Herbert's sci-fi novels to live-action, joining the 1984 film directed by David Lynch and the 2000 TV miniseries that aired on the Sci-Fi channel in North America. There was also an acclaimed documentary titled Jodorowsky's Dune about auteurist director Alejandro Jodorowsky (Tusk, The Holy Mountain) and his failed attempt to adapt the novel back in the 1970s.

Dune releases in theaters on December 18.

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musalala

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Hype is the mind killer...

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cetaepsilon

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Edited By cetaepsilon

So basically it's Chronicles of Riddick.

The only medium that successfully conveyed the mystery of Dune is the first Dune game from Cryo. Man it feels good to be born in the 80s.

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Ormgaard

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Edited By Ormgaard

@cetaepsilon: I remember playing that on my Amiga dmn fine game, with awesome music and writing, enjoyed it immensly even thou im not born in the 80's but in the 60's :)

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jenovaschilld

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I read the book when i was very young back in the 80's just after watching the movie. Loved the book way more. Paul Atreides was young 15 when all of this started, it was very impactful sci-fi for the time, setting an adventure of class warfare much like GoT. AS this was way before Star Wars, it was a story that was hard to believe came before it.

The cast look fine, the settings look okay from what was in the videos. I wish patrick stewart was brought back in some way to star in this film, but the rest of the cast should do well. I am worried about the Baron and Piter basically all of the antagonists because it is the bad guys that made this sci-fi so damn good. The foreboding, the evil was overwhelming for the young protagonist, edge of your sit stuff.

The 84' movie was good, and interesting for what the tech was like back then. Some really good 80's sci-fi movie at that time to, much better then the crappy 90s movies. Beastmaster, Buckaro Banzai, The last starfighter, enemy mine, and more... The sci-fi channel TV Dune miniseries was just so bad, so dang bad. Wrongs ages, wrong actors, wrong focus on special effects. And worse.. everything looked like it was set on a very small sound stage. But strangely.. closer to the book.

Does anyone know how many movies this Dune will be ?? a trilogy to two movies. AS Dune being told in a 2hr movie, just cannot do it justice.

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BasketballFan

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Edited By BasketballFan

@jenovaschilld: Given this is his lifetime dream project. V wouldn't settle for anything less that 2 movies in his contract. (Its 2 movies)

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dzimm

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The trailer, at least, gives the impression that this is going to be faithful to the book, which pleases me. The cast looks generally suited to their roles. But, yeah, very bland color grading. Hopefully the final movie will have some visual zest to it.

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popgea

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Looks good except I felt there were too many direct mirrors of the original movie in the trailer. If that happens too often it will too jarring. It seemed like even the camera angles were the same. There are too many indelible scenes in the original that can't be overwritten directly IMO. We will see.

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BasketballFan

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Edited By BasketballFan

@popgea: There are too many scenes in the BOOK. He is going straight from the book. V was dreaming of this before that movie was made.

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Divisionbell

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Looks excellent and pretty faithful so far. Not a ton to work with in such a short trailer considering the amount of material not covered in it. Denis has proven himself over and over again, and this looks to continue that trend.

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Bioshock4Please

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Daaaaang. I see the commenters drank their Haterade this morning. To those saying it looks flat and saturated, keep in mind that color and set needs contrast, and there's a ton of stuff not shown. Another thing is that a lot of the flat stuff comes from Kaladan, which encompasses a very small part of the book.

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BasketballFan

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Just a reminder in spite of all the misguided comments over an early trailer...

This man has never made a bad movie, and every movie he has made is a masterpiece.

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Ormgaard

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@basketballfan: Is an opinion misguided? please enlighten me

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fotis52

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@basketballfan: Enemy is one of my personal worst movies of all time and Arrival, while it builds up nice, the ending is way too convoluted for me...

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BasketballFan

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@fotis52: Your taste in movies is terrible.

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fotis52

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@basketballfan: because it's not the same as yours?

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BasketballFan

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@fotis52: Sure however you wanna "frame" your terrible taste.

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DoctorTanaka

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Alan Smithee does not approve of this new version.

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zyxe

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zyxe  Moderator

The trailer just isn't doing anything for me. It's like it's trying to hype up nothing--didn't feel the emotion coming through the dialogue, and I agree the colors are bland and don't add to the world.

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Ormgaard

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Was super hyped for this, but for some reason this trailer just din't "connect" it looked bland and forgettable, did not feel the vibe from the first movie adaption at all.

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deactivated-6793e8ba0e8bf

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Villeneuve has made some quality stuff so I'm getting pretty excited for this one. He proved me a skeptic with Blade Runner 2049 being much better than I thought it would be.

One red flag for me is Jason Momoa playing Duncan as Jason Momoa.

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xWillKillsx

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They really need to start remaking trash movies and try to make them better, then remaking good movies and making them trash.

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misterginger

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Edited By misterginger

I gotta say, I was really, really excited for this to drop....I've also gotta say, I was expecting more. I don't think it would have killed them to use a bit more color.

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kevkeisha

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While I don't think 'Dune' lends itself well to 'big screen' adaptations, if there is ANY director that could FINALLY adapt this to the big screen SUCCESSFULLY, it's Denis Villeneuve! With that said, I don't think 'Dune' lends itself well to 'big screen' adaptations. My suggestion for a winning formula for adaptation of an epic story like dune: Keep Denis Villeneuve, give it a big budget, make the show 8-to-10 2-hour parts, and hand it over to HBO, or Netflix.

The trailer makes this look like a Netflix movie (which I don't think they want!). The accompanying music in this trailer is so... horrible!

Fingers crossed Villeneuve pulls this off!

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Bioshock4Please

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@kevkeisha: The music is a cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the Band that was slated to score the original 70's movie that got scrapped. I doubt it will be in the actual movie. Not sure what makes you say Netflix movie. The effects look great, the cast looks proper in the costumes, and we can't say much of the acting yet. I'm with you, fingers crossed, but then again, I think it looks good in the trailer.

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uninspiredcup

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@kevkeisha: For all the problems the original 1984 movie has, the soundtrack wasn't one of them.

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jedijax

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@kevkeisha: Agreed. The Dune saga is far too vast, even for a film trilogy. What's worse, like the spiderman movies, we always get the same events replayed over and over. Time to move on to other chapters.

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uninspiredcup

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Edited By uninspiredcup

Awfully desaturated and flat looking.

Like, this series has some incredible pieces of art-work attached to it, and this is the best look they come up with?

Other than that, plot-wise looks faithful, can pick out scenes from the book easily enough.

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tsunami2311

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Edited By tsunami2311

I seriously hope this is good movie, I love the original movie and the scifi mini series they did. they were all great. I sure they dont hold candle to the books but i never read them sadly dont have attention span to read books. i should maybe try audio books.

what know about lore comes from wiki and fan sites,

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jedijax

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@tsunami2311: It's a matter of taste. I never liked the original books, but loved the ones that came afterwards. I also love the SYFY miniseries, but they cover merely a fraction of the entire storyline. Hell, just give us either a Butlerian Jihad trilogy of films or a God Emperor of Dune.

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tsunami2311

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@jedijax: I would settle for just more dune

Movies/series/mini series even games I only know of 3 dune games unlike certain other franchise that use lightsabers... dune inspired certain parts of that franchise that has shit ton of all that stuff I think dune has much better lore

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jedijax

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@tsunami2311: Unpopular opinion? I have always thought Star Wars was an outright rip-off of Herbert's work. Sure, things evolved over the years, but A New Hope is totally so. Hell, even later works by other authors kept steering the franchise towards a more Dunes-y current.

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