It's been building for weeks, but it finally happened: the first real trailer for Dune: Part Three hit the internet, and the reaction across Barstool's corner of Twitter was instant. Denis Villeneuve's trilogy capper doesn't land in theaters until December 18, but the footage alone was enough to send accounts into full hype mode within minutes of the drop.
TRAILER TODAY. https://t.co/ci1kQ4jqWt
That's obviously not a scene from Dune -- it's Jurgen Klopp losing his mind at a soccer match -- but that's the point. When your trailer countdown clip is a random Klopp fist-pump, you're just borrowing raw adrenaline to hold people over. It worked. By the time Project Big Screen posted the actual footage, the timeline was primed and ready.
New trailer for DUNE: PART THREE released. Hits theaters December 18th. Thoughts? https://t.co/xG82Cap5x3
The trailer itself lives up to the hyperbole. According to Rolling Stone and Variety, this installment jumps nearly two decades ahead of Part Two, with Chalamet's Paul Atreides now dealing with the fallout of the holy war he unleashed at the end of the last film. Zendaya's Chani is back and reportedly furious with him, Florence Pugh's Princess Irulan and Robert Pattinson's shapeshifting Scytale are circling, and Jason Momoa returns as a resurrected, clone-like version of Duncan Idaho. It's a heavier, darker turn than the previous two chapters -- exactly what you'd expect from a franchise closer built around a guy flirting with fascism, per IndieWire's read on the footage.
The trailer wasn't just a video drop, either. It debuted at a Global IMAX Fan Event out of Los Angeles that reportedly beamed live to packed theaters in New York, Chicago, Dallas, London, Berlin and beyond, with Villeneuve and Chalamet doing a live Q&A on stage. Chalamet's actual appearance is exactly what the photo circulating from the launch captured.
Naturally, the jokes followed immediately. One Barstool account joked about physically collapsing at the theater on release day, while another posted a clip of a group rolling up to an AMC lobby to get in the mood -- both bits, not literal previews of December 18, but exactly the kind of unhinged anticipation a trailer like this is supposed to generate.
Me, at the theater on December 18th: https://t.co/eXZh9prcCJ
There's also real content coming out of this beyond the memes -- Robbie Fox teased a Late Night episode breaking down the trailer frame by frame, admitting the plot is already tangled enough that nobody fully has it figured out yet. That's probably the honest state of the fandom right now: hyped, a little confused about the 20-year time jump, and fully locked in for December. Five months out, and this is already shaping up to be one of the biggest theater events of the year.