Empire: “Dune: Part Two will have Gurney Halleck playing The Baliset”

For the most part, Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune was everything fans of Frank Herbert’s epic tome could ask for. Even though it only covered half of the original novel, he did justice to the fall of House Atreides, nailed the awe-inspiring heft of the sandworms, carefully lined up the cascading dominoes that fuel the swirling political plot – and even made it so that Spice was visibly glimmering in the air on Arrakis. But there was one detail from the novel that didn’t make it to the screen first time around – and if fans were sad to miss it, Villeneuve was even sadder.

That detail was, of course, the Baliset – the unusual musical instrument that’s a particular favourite of Josh Brolin’s warrior Gurney Halleck. While Villeneuve (and Hans Zimmer) gave us unexpected space bagpipes last time around, a scene shot for Dune in which Brolin’s Halleck mournfully plucked at the Baliset’s strings sadly ended up on the cutting room floor. But no more – speaking to Empire in our world-exclusive Dune: Part Two cover feature, the director confirms the Baliset is back, back, back in the follow-up. The Gurney song survived Part Two! he declares victoriously, the notion of bringing it to the screen clearly having played on his mind. It became a weird priority for me. But Josh Brolin is a poet and we played it together. It was awesome.

Ben Travis

That’s weird, I would have thought a faithful adaptation of the characters should have been a priority from the start 😏. Seems to me some of the fans’ criticism of the numerous scenes cut from the source text has made its way to Denis Villeneuve – and he has decided to include perhaps the least consequential aspect that was previously left out.

The second cover is occupied by the oppressors – Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha, Dave Bautista’s ‘Beast’ Rabban, Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen, Léa Seydoux’s Lady Margot, and Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan

The recent promotional wave for the second part feels a bit off, considering the movie has been delayed to March 2024 because of the actors’ strike. I have not kept a close watch on the news, but from what I gathered Villeneuve’s vision is still quite removed from the books. The bald Harkonnens are a weird choice that veers heavily into cliché. Reducing the intricate political machinations in the book to two neat camps, as the two revealed covers would suggest, is yet more proof that the director either doesn’t understand the book’s fundamental themes, or has chosen to ignore them in favor a producing a bland blockbuster for American audiences. Guess we’ll have to wait another half a year to find out…