Denis Villeneuve may not have gotten the call yet from Disney and Lucasfilm to direct a Star Wars movie, but he can make his own — in the form of his Dune remake.

Dune is Frank Herbert’s seminal science-fiction novel published in 1965, years before the first Star Wars film came out in 1977. In fact, Star Wars director George Lucas has acknowledged the influence that Dune had on early drafts of A New Hope, so it’s fitting that Villeneuve may bring it full circle.

Villeneuve has been steadily working on his passion project for nearly a year, and with a screenwriter on board, it’s finally starting to take shape. In an interview with FANDOM, Villeneuve revealed just how his Dune remake was beginning to shape up, throwing in his hopes for how the final product will look:

“Most of the main ideas of Star Wars are coming from Dune so it’s going to be a challenge to [tackle] this. The ambition is to do the Star Wars movie I never saw. In a way, it’s Star Wars for adults. We’ll see.”

Villeneuve is right on the money about Star Wars synthesizing elements from Dune (and Flash Gordon, and Akira Kurosawa). The desert planet, the latent mystical powers, the ruthless intergalactic dictator — those are all elements that Lucas filtered in from Dune, which helped turn Star Wars into the most successful sci-fi franchise in cinematic history.

Villeneuve is a self-proclaimed fan of Star Wars, having suggested recently that he would like to direct a standalone Star Wars film for Lucasfilm, though he hasn’t received any calls yet. “It’s something that, again it’s like, I would be intrigued,” Villeneuve told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “What is dangerous with Star Wars right now is it’s become its own vocabulary. I would love to see them, I think Rogue One was a very interesting attempt to get out of the mold… I think it would be a great idea to get out of there and to go on a new part of the galaxy, that I would be open to.”

But with Star Wars such a powerful force in the movie landscape, is there room for a Dune movie? Star Wars has permeated the pop culture consciousness in a way that Dune never did, despite the multiple attempts to bring the groundbreaking sci-fi books to the big screen. David Lynch’s 1984 feature film starring Kyle MacLachlan is an infamous blip on the prestigious director’s career, and a highly ambitious adaptation by avant-garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky only spawned a fascinating documentary about how it failed. But if anyone is up to the task, it’s Villeneuve. The bold French-Canadian director helmed an audacious and critically acclaimed sequel to yet another seminal sci-fi classic, Blade Runner, and has a distinct talent for honing abstract ideas into terrific feature-length movies.