Vanity Fair released the first image of Timothée Chalamet’s character Paul Atreides on his native planet of Caladan, as part of their preview of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the epic sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert. Paul Atreides is the central hero of Dune, a child of privilege raised by a powerful family. Unfortunately, his family, despite all their power, is unable to protect him from what awaits.
EXCLUSIVE: Timothée Chalamet is Paul Atreides.
Your first look at Denis Villeneuve’s #Dune adaptation has arrived: https://t.co/Mz3HeIuCX8
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) April 13, 2020
This is Chalamet’s first leading role in a Hollywood blockbuster, and Chalamet spoke to Vanity Fair on why he decided to take on the role. “The immediately appealing thing about Paul was the fact that in a story of such detail and scale and world-building, the protagonist is on an anti-hero’s-journey of sorts,” Chalamet said. Paul Atreides isn’t a character who is looking for adventure, but fate has a different plan for him.
Paul Atreides was played by Kyle MacLachlan in a previous film adaptation of Dune, which was helmed by David Lynch. The 1984 Dune was unanimously viewed as a critical flop, generally because it was perceived as messy and incomprehensible. This in part is due to the source material, with Herbert’s novel offering a meticulously detailed saga of royal houses warring for control of the desert planet Arrakis, and as a result we have the film medium struggling to capture all those details in a palatable runtime.
But if anyone can do it, it is Denis Villeneuve, who is responsible for Arrival, one of the best sci-fi movies I have seen in years. At the moment, Dune still has a release date of December 18, 2020.
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