In the new film from Warner Bros. and Legendary, the pair are set to play Leto II and Ghanima, the twin offspring of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya), born after the events of the original Frank Herbert novel. The project will mark the big-screen debut of Momoa, who is expected to be joined in the cast by his father, Jason Momoa, with the latter playing a resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho. Like Nakoa-Wolf, Brooke is a relative newcomer, who has heretofore been seen only in Apple’s sci-fi drama Silo and the film The Primrose Railway Children.
It’s expected that Villeneuve’s third and final Dune film will adapt Herbert’s novel Dune Messiah, set 12 years after the events of Dune, which follows Atreides’ struggles with the consequences of his Fremen-led jihad upon his ascension to Emperor Muad’Dib. A release date and official title for the new film haven’t yet been disclosed.
Matt Grobar
Maybe I’m imagining things, but the tone of the second paragraph sounds steeped in sarcasm and incredulousness. Spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read Dune: Messiah and the third book in the series, Children of Dune: the twins of Paul and Chani are born at the end of the second book and are about 9 years old by the time Children of Dune starts. Casting young adults to play them implies more changes to the timeline and to characters – and I for one could very much do without Villeneuve’s paltry rewriting of the novels.
Granted, the mini-series aged-up these two characters as well – it would be complicated to find child actors of similar age to play the complexity of pre-born characters in Dune. But the mini-series explicitly adapted both the second and third books, and titled the project Children of Dune. What Villeneuve is going for here is anyone’s guess. Casting the son of another cast member raises further concerns, especially for such a massive project – I’m getting flashbacks to the time Will Smith tried to jumpstart his son’s career. I can at least take comfort in my low expectations for this adaptation, but as I have found out with Part II, there’s always room for worse than your expectations.
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