Riding the Sandworms: ‘Dune 2’ Action Scenes Took 44 Days to Shoot and Used Road Runner Cartoons for Inspiration
variety.comJazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “Desert power.” That’s how Denis Villeneuve teases what’s to come at the end of 2021’s “Dune,” as Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atriedes looks out across the desert in awe as he sees a Fremen person riding a sandworm.
And Villeneuve does not disappoint. The director goes full white-knuckle thrill ride in its sequel, orchestrating a glorious sandworm riding sequence that took 44 days to shoot.
It was the most complex thing Villeneuve had ever attempted to do. It needed to feel edgy, dangerous, exciting and real. It took Villeneuve’s most-trusted collaborators to help him pull off the scene, in which Paul uses the thumper for the first time to draw a sandworm out from beneath the surface and mount the creature as Chani (Zendaya), Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and the Fremen look on.
Production designer Patrice Vermette tells Variety, “We call them ‘Methodology Meetings.’ It’s when Denis has a new storyboard that nobody has seen, and it’s all the heads of department sitting around the table.” He continues, “When we got to the worm-riding sequence, we were like, ‘Wow, okay, how the hell are we going to do that?
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