Dune 2's Director Kept Anya Taylor-Joy's Casting A Secret For One Reason

In his 2024 film "Dune: Part Two," director Denis Villeneuve noticeably removed a character from Frank Herbert's original novel. In the book "Dune," while Paul Atreides and his pregnant mother Jessica are hiding out among the Fremen, Jessica gives birth to Paul's young sister Alia. Because Jessica drank the spiritually-connected Water of Life while Alia was still in utero, the little baby was born with an adult intellect and almost immediately grew into a toddler. She ended up playing a larger role in Herbert's novel. The toddler Alia was portrayed by Alicia Witt in David Lynch's 1984 "Dune" film adaptation.

Villeneuve, however, removed Alia from the narrative because it would be too difficult to haul a real-life baby out to the movie's hot, sandy filming locations in the deserts of Jordan. Instead, the story for "Dune" was re-written so that Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) received psychic messages from Alia from inside the womb. Villeneuve and his co-screenwriter, Jon Spaihts, also wrote an additional scene wherein Paul (Timothée Chalamet) has a mystical vision of the future and has a brief conversation with an adult Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy). /Film previously wrote about how Taylor-Joy had to fly to a beach in Namibia, almost at the last minute, to film her "Dune" scenes.

Taylor-Joy, however, wasn't mentioned in any of the marketing material for "Dune: Part Two," which seems like an odd choice, given that she is a recognizable movie star. Of course, considering that she only appeared in one scene, it's understandable why Villeneuve would want to keep her cameo secret: He intended for it to be a surprise. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, the filmmaker clarified that he also wanted to see if he could actually keep some details under-wraps while working on a major studio motion picture that cost $190 million to make.

In the last few decades, journalists and Hollywood publicists have entered into an unspoken agreement over the dissemination of information. Only a studio's publicity firm is now permitted to dole out information about a movie, and journalists are allowed to openly discuss anything that appears in a film's previews or advertising. If a fact about a movie comes from an "illegitimate" source (a paparazzi photo, a rumor, or some other type of "leak"), it is not meant to be seen. It's not until a publicity department reveals the information that we are allowed to talk about it.

Despite most journalists and fans playing by these rules, there are still information-hungry muck-mongers out there who try to spread information when they can. Many Hollywood productions, as a result, go into severe lock-ups during shooting, keeping scripts under tight wraps and sets closed so as to better protect upcoming blockbusters from being spoiled. Villeneuve knew the dirt-hunters were out there, so he decided to keep Taylor-Joy's presence in "Dune: Part Two" a secret — partly to retain surprise, but mostly to see if it could even be done. As he put it: 

"I think that Hollywood is the most gossipy town on earth and I wanted, as an experiment, to see how long we could keep a secret. We did it. It was a special unit, we went to Africa to shoot with Anya under super-secrecy. I just loved the idea to keep something a surprise for the audience until the very end; it was like a gift I wanted to keep for the fans." 

It worked, as many filmgoers didn't know the adult Alia would be in "Dune: Part Two" until it hit theaters. It was also clever to cast a movie star as Alia, as she will play a larger role in the "Dune" story in Villeneuve's upcoming adaptation of Herbert's "Dune Messiah." She also appears in the book "Children of Dune," so if these movies keep being made, Taylor-Joy will have a long running and presumably lucrative gig.