Timothée Chalamet is making it clear that there would be no room for complacency in Dune: Part Three. In a CNN Town Hall meeting that aired on February 21, 2026, Chalamet sat down with his Interstellar co-star Matthew McConaughey for a conversation about his work and Dune: Part Three, scheduled for release on December 18, 2026. What seemed like a “complacent confession” actually turned out to be the exact opposite, where he confessed about the pressure he felt not to be complacent.
Denis Villeneuve’s final Dune film described as “eeriest yet”
“I didn’t want to be complacent about a single moment. Everything was sacred, and it was my last time doing a ‘Dune’ film, so I really wanted to treat it as sacred. Because people can get complacent, but I was more intense on the third one. It felt like that was the natural momentum, so I wanted to push against that as hard as I could,” he confessed. While he admitted that long-running series would inevitably bring about a level of comfort and familiarity for everyone involved in the production, for him, familiarity would be the enemy. Dune: Part Three is based on Dune Messiah, the darker sequel to Frank Herbert’s original book.
He even confessed that he came to the set early to examine the mechanical aspects of the Ornithopter cockpit, ensuring that every interaction felt grounded and lived-in. This was very different from the first film, in which he confessed to having felt intimidated by the scope of the film and the sci-fi aspects of it. He went into the final installment with “more liberty than ever.”
He also confessed that director Denis Villeneuve had taken a big creative leap into the final installment of the film, calling it the “eeriest” installment of the series so far. This installment supposedly jumps 12-15 years into the future, allowing him to play an older, more unstable Paul Atreides as he struggles to come to terms with his holy war.
He confessed that his co-star, Oscar Isaac, who played Duke Leto in the film, was the inspiration behind the Shakespearean level of intensity that he wanted to bring to the film.
The evening was also personal, as Chalamet confessed to McConaughey that he had already seen Interstellar more than 20 times. As Matthew McConaughey reveals, Kylie Jenner surprised Timothée Chalamet with a private IMAX screening of the movie for his birthday last year: “I was grumpy on the way because I didn’t know where she was taking me,” Chalamet says. “I was like, ‘It’s my birthday. Why are we driving 30 minutes outside of L.A.?’ I got to the theater; it was ‘Interstellar’ in IMAX. I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry,'” proving that even though he was ending one of the most ambitious sci-fi sagas of all time, he was still a huge fan of the genre that had helped make him into the actor he was today.
