Timothée Chalamet is afraid. But he’s not letting the fear grip him.
A trademark floppy-haired Chalamet anchors the new trailer for upcoming sci-fi epic Dune, wherein he broods about his future, wears a breathing tube to navigate inhospitable terrain, and even briefly locks lips with his co-star Zendaya, though it might just be a mirage. It all might be, in fact — the murky Dune epic follows Chalamet’s Paul Atreides as he navigates the interconnected politics of a new world while also coming of age.
“The dream is, like, [for] the theater to be rocking,” Chalamet told MTV News’s Josh Horowitz in 2018 about then being in final negotiations for his lead role. “To work on something of that scale — I’m not afraid of the green screen-isms of it all,” he said, noting that he still wasn’t sure if that was director Denis Villeneuve’s plan quite yet. From the trailer alone, and its massive scope, it’s a safe bet that digital technology was, in fact, implemented to help execute such a grand vision.
“I’m just talking the big-budget nature of it,” Chalamet continued then. “I can imagine on something else, particularly for this long shooting periods, you can get there on a certain day and be like, ‘What am I doing?’ But what’s amazing with Denis is that his movies are so rapidly intelligent.”
The trailer — our first complete look at Villeneuve’s particular eye on the world of Dune — is not just the Chalamet show, though. The film boasts an impressive ensemble cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Javier Bardem, and more. But of course, it’s loaded with plenty of moody moments in which Chalamet can walk through sand in a large coat and stare off into the distance like a darker, more tortured Luke Skywalker longing for adventures far away from Tatooine.
Dune is the latest big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel, following a 1984 take from David Lynch and a 2000 miniseries on what was then the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy). Villeneuve, the visionary behind Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, helms the 2020 version, which was originally due to be released in December. The trailer doesn’t offer a release date, though it does specify where you’ll be able to see the film when it drops: “Only in theaters.”
Watch Chalamet brood, yell, and embrace his destiny in the first Dune trailer above.
