Finally, some tantalizing news about Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune — and it’s all thanks to Oscar Isaac. Isaac is set to play Duke Leto Atreides, father of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and husband to Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), in Villeneuve’s live-action adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Frank Herbert.

The Dune narrative over the course of the past year has provided some interesting updates. In recent months, we’ve learned it’s been pushed back on the Warner Bros. release schedule (it won’t be out until December 2020) but also, a sequel is apparently already in the works. Thankfully, Isaac is here to give us news about the specifics of this film and those specifics sounds very intriguing. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Isaac teased, “It’s just a wholly, wholly different thing,” before going on to explain more about the movie’s tone and how it’s different from David Lynch‘s 1984 adaptation starring Kyle McLachlan as Paul Atreides and the 2000 Syfy miniseries.

“I couldn’t imagine anyone more suited for the tone of the original Frank Herbert novels than Denis. There are some things that are — for lack of a better word — nightmarish about what you see… There’s just this kind of brutalist element to it. It’s shocking. It’s scary. It’s very visceral. And I know that definitely between Denis and myself and Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson as the family unit, we really searched for the emotion of it. I’m beyond myself with excitement. I think it’s good to feel cool, unique, and special.”

Isaac, Chalamet, and Ferguson are just three of many big names attached to Villeneuve’s upcoming space epic. Additional Dune cast includes Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård, and David Dastmalchian. Previously, Villeneuve also hinted to Fandom his ambitions to put Dune on part with another epic space pic: “The ambition is to do the Star Wars movie I never saw. In a way, it’s Star Wars for adults.”

Dune is set to hit theaters on December 18, 2020. For more, check out our calendar of every movie coming in 2020.