Dune: Part Two Was Quietly Polished By The Mastermind Behind The Last Of Us And Chernobyl
The saga of Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides will continue in "Dune: Part Two," the second chapter of Denis Villeneuve's ambitious adaptation of the classic Frank Herbert sci-fi novel long deemed too dense and intricate to be translated into a crowd-pleasing tentpole. All the major players who made it out of "Part One" alive are back for another trip to Arrakis, with the likes of Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Léa Seydoux, and Christopher Walken joining them in key additional roles. Villeneuve is once again directing from a script he co-penned with "Dune" scribe Jon Spaihts, although it turns out the pair had some help in that department.
Yes, despite what the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) would have you believe, the writing process on just about any film — especially one as narratively complex and loaded with world-building as a "Dune" movie — doesn't merely stop once the cameras are rolling. Speaking on the "Happy. Sad. Confused." podcast (via The Playlist), "The Last of Us" showrunner Craig Mazin quietly revealed that he did some script polishing on "Dune: Part Two."
Although he's shifted his focus from movies to TV of late, Mazin said he "will work with certain directors when they call because I love them and because they're so brilliant." Mazin then went on to name-drop Villeneuve specifically as a filmmaker he would "absolutely" collaborate with if asked. Naturally, his interviewer couldn't just let a comment like that slide, which led to Mazin confirming he was a "participating writer" on the second "Dune" film. "I came long after. [...] You come in and do a little bit of work," he explained, clarifying he will be credited for the movie's "Additional Literary Material" under a Writers Guild of America (WGA) rule that went into effect in January 2022.
The curious case of Craig Mazin
Craig Mazin, for those not familiar, has led a genuinely fascinating career in Hollywood. He got his start in the late '90s writing broad (and I mean broad) comedies like Disney's "RocketMan" and "Senseless," a largely-forgotten offering from "Wayne's World" director Penelope Spheeris. Not long after, Mazin helmed "The Specials," a low-budget superhero comedy that saw him drawing from a script by some fellow named James Gunn. I wonder what ever happened to that guy?
Anyway, Mazin continued carving out a career for himself by writing commercially successful though otherwise rather terrible comedies, including the parody sequels "Scary Movie 3" and "Scary Movie 4," "Superhero Movie," the second and third "Hangover" films, and "Identity Thief." He eventually branched away from comedy by writing "The Huntsman: Winter's War," a widely-derided spinoff/sequel to "Snow White and the Huntsman" that flopped pretty hard at the box office in 2016. This is also where I should confess to having a soft spot for "Winter's War," mostly because it's the sort of silly-bad fantasy adventure that feels like it could've been based on one of my and my friends' table-top campaigns.
Three years later, however, Mazin completely changed course by developing HBO's universally revered "Chernobyl" limited series. Now he's show-running HBO's acclaimed "The Last of Us" series with Neil Druckmann and working on major projects with celebrated auteurs like Denis Villeneuve (in addition to co-writing Eli Roth's yet-to-be-released video game movie adaptation "Borderlands"). It just goes to show: never give up on your dreams, kiddos! Maybe one day you, too, will find yourself nonchalantly mentioning on a podcast that you co-wrote a "Dune" movie.
"Dune: Part Two" arrives in theaters on November 3, 2023.