On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will rejoice the creators and stars chargeable for crafting a few of the yr’s greatest movies. Curated and chosen by IndieWire’s editorial crew, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind movies nicely value toasting. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews main as much as the Los Angeles occasion.
Denis Villeneuve can nonetheless keep in mind his first encounters with Frank Herbert’s “Dune” novels.
As a sci-fi obsessed teenager who couldn’t have predicted the Hollywood greatness that awaited him, Herbert’s immersive desert world of Arrakis was the right intersection of his many pursuits. Within the e book’s detailed descriptions of winged helicopters and spice-mining equipment, he discovered gas for his lifelong love of design. He was mesmerized by Herbert’s detailed descriptions of intergalactic ecology, which he likened to studying an “encyclopedia.” And the novels’ warnings in regards to the risks of blending politics and faith struck him as each a prescient assertion and an instance of the style’s distinctive potential to function a vessel for social commentary.
Villeneuve dreamed of adapting the primary “Dune” novel right into a definitive movie that did justice to Herbert’s epic imaginative and prescient. However he knew that the possibly career-defining venture deserved his absolute best.
Somewhat than rush to pursue the chance, Villeneuve spent years establishing himself as one among Hollywood’s most dependable blockbuster auteurs. From acclaimed thrillers like “Prisoners” and “Sicario” to sci-fi stunners “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049,” he constructed a resume so spectacular that it might have been silly to guess in opposition to the “Dune” adaptation that finally materialized. Villeneuve, who will obtain the Visionary Award on the 2024 IndieWire Honors for his work on the “Dune” movies, defined that the lengthy wait was all a part of the plan.
“I waited a few years earlier than accepting the problem,” Villeneuve mentioned. “I agreed to do it once I felt I used to be able to convey it to the display. And I did it with individuals who completely believed within the novel.”
Along with his two-part adaptation, Villeneuve achieved fashionable Hollywood’s Holy Grail: a real blockbuster that introduced in enormous field workplace receipts whereas incomes vital acclaim on the best way to changing into a serious participant within the awards race. “Dune: Half One” and “Dune: Half Two” mixed to gross over $1.1 billion worldwide regardless of the primary movie being launched day-and-date on HBO Max amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Half One” additionally acquired ten Oscar nominations together with Greatest Image and Greatest Director, in the end profitable within the Cinematography, Authentic Rating, Sound, Modifying, Manufacturing Design, and Visible Results classes. For “Half Two,” the sky seems to be the restrict.
The success of “Half One” made a follow-up movie inevitable, however Villeneuve acquired no such ensures when he launched into the venture. Whereas he and his companions at Legendary Leisure had been at all times satisfied that Herbert’s novel required two movies to correctly adapt, the second movie’s existence was contingent on the success of its predecessor. Villeneuve was at all times assured that his movie was a winner, however the interval between wrapping and releasing “Half One” compelled him to face the daunting risk that his lifelong ardour venture could be left half-finished.
“In fact I used to be rolling the cube. I didn’t know 100% for certain,” Villeneuve mentioned of his preliminary probabilities of getting a second movie greenlit. “If the film had been a disaster with the critics or the field workplace, perhaps we’d not be speaking right here. In order that’s the fantastic thing about this job. It’s artwork. You can not predict the outcomes, you already know?”
Issues labored out in Villeneuve’s favor, and he’s now capable of bask within the information that he did justice to the novel that he spent a lot of his life appreciating. (Whereas he’s at the moment writing a 3rd movie, “Dune Messiah,” that can see him return to the director’s chair, he emphasizes that it’ll function an epilogue to a diptych that’s already accomplished.) Villeneuve described the achievement of his purpose as each an emotional catharsis and one more step in a lifelong creative evolution.
“For the primary time I used to be actually capable of convey photos that I had, desires that I had again within the years to the display, which could be very transferring for me,” he mentioned. “However after all, by means of the method of adaptation, the books are the books and my films are my films. The variation says extra issues about me than in regards to the e book.”
With a seemingly infinite string of hits behind him, the world is now Villeneuve’s oyster. He has entry to studio sources that the majority filmmakers solely dream of, with A-list actors and crew members lining as much as work on no matter he chooses to sort out subsequent. Whereas he prefers to not talk about future initiatives — he says unmade films are “fragile” issues that may simply be broken when the world learns an excessive amount of too quickly — he isn’t shy in regards to the worth that he continues to see in making sci-fi movies.
“There’s one thing about with the ability to discuss troublesome or abrasive subject material with complete freedom since you are speaking a few world that doesn’t exist,” he mentioned when requested what retains drawing him to the style. “You might be free to speak about politics, about faith, about troublesome issues that it might not be potential to speak about in any other case.”
He added that he sees the style as a chance to say one thing inherently constructive about humanity in a time when wanting in the direction of the long run usually feels way more interesting than taking within the current. “There’s an thought of hope to venture photos which are coming from the long run,” he mentioned. “There’s one thing hopeful about that that I like.”
That sense of hope extends to one among Villeneuve’s favourite matters: the way forward for his artwork type. In recent times he has emerged as one among Hollywood’s most public evangelists for the massive display moviegoing expertise, hailing massive scale films as an important type of expression that he believes can nonetheless thrive in a altering media ecosystem. When the subject turned to the state of cinema, Villeneuve revealed a glimmer of the identical optimism that propels him to spend a lot time making movies in regards to the future.
“I’m very optimistic. I imagine that the massive display expertise and theater expertise will prevail. I do know it has been challenged prior to now years with streaming and the pandemic, however I feel that we’ll discover a steadiness and equilibrium,” he mentioned, stressing that whereas he’s involved about impartial filmmakers receiving entry to theater screens, he stays satisfied that the human want for moviegoing is alive and nicely. “I feel that we want, in society, areas the place we will be all collectively, reside feelings collectively. It may be a rock live performance, it may be a play in a theater, or an opera or no matter. It’s very wholesome for people to be collectively to share feelings and concepts collectively.”