Dune director Denis Villeneuve will be returning to Arrakis for a third installment of the sci-fi franchise, but he has said Dune: Messiah will likely be his last journey. However, that doesn’t mean that Warner Bros. isn’t interested in moving forward with more Dune movies. A new rumour from scooper Daniel Richtman claims that the studio has plans for Dune 4 and another Dune TV series, all potentially without the involvement of Villeneuve.

World of Reel has heard the same rumours, adding that Villeneuve is reportedly “irked” by these plans to continue the franchise, with or without him.

Now, Villeneuve has previously indicated that he would be fine if someone else continued the Dune franchise. “I think that it would be a good idea for me to make sure that, in ‘Messiah,’ there are the seeds in the project if someone wants to do something else afterwards, because they are beautiful books.” Villeneuve said. “They are more difficult to adapt. They become more and more esoteric. It’s a bit more tricky to adapt, but I’m not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else.” By the time Messiah is released, Villeneuve will have spent over a decade making movies in the franchise.

We’ve also already had a Dune project released with little involvement from Villeneuve: Dune: Prophecy. He was once slated to direct the first episode, but had to drop out to focus on Dune: Part Two. The six-episode series is set “10,000 years prior to the events of Dune and follows the Harkonnen Sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, and establish the fabled sect known as the Bene Gesserit.” The series has already been renewed for a second season.

I don’t know if our own Alex Maidy was a fan of Dune: Prophecy, as he seemed a little underwhelmed in his review. “Dune: Prophecy is a well-made series with high production values and a solid cast of veterans and newcomers, but it cannot help but feel like a replica of Game of Thrones set in outer space,” Maidy wrote. “With a limited run of episodes for the first season, I expected more from this series, which spends each episode too heavily reliant on characters talking to each other rather than providing a compelling argument for telling this story rather than other periods from the ten thousand years before Paul Atreides arrived on Arrakis.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.

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