Arrival director Denis Villeneuve is adapting Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune for the big screen, with rising star Timothée Chalamet in the lead role of Paul Atreides.

Villeneuve is a terrific director and Dune is one of the towering classics of science fiction, so this is great news. Set thousands of years in the future when mankind has explored the known galaxy and inhabited a whole mess of planets, the story opens with House Atreides being tasked by the Emperor Shaddam IV to take over stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, aka Dune. Chalamet’s character is the heir to House Atreides, but eventually becomes something much greater, and that’s only in the first book.

There are also a lot of trippy visions that happen along the way, and spaceship pilots who look like big brainy slugs, and philosophical digressions, and giant sandworms. Speaking with Chalamet, Total Film Magazine asked him the question we’re all thinking: will the Dune movie “blow our minds?”

I could just say ‘yes’ to your question. Based on the experience I had, I have very high hopes for Dune. Both as something hopefully to be seen by a lot of people but also as an individual work of art.

Is there’s one sci-fi story I think is worthy of being into a “work of art,” it’s Dune, so this is good to hear. That goes double with Villenueve in the director’s chair. If you’ve seen Blade Runner 2049, you know the man has an artist’s touch.

Dune is scheduled to come out on December 18, 2020. Or rather, Dune Part 1 is scheduled to come out then. That’s right: Warner Bros. is splitting this thing up into multiple parts. AND there are five other novels in the original cycle, if people have chutzpah to try and make them.

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h/t Games Radar