Despite not being nominated for Best Director for “Dune,” the auteur told MovieMaker magazine that he is “deeply pleased” with the 10 Oscar nominations the sci-fi adaptation garnered. “Frankly, if you had told me a few months ago that we’d be in the Oscar race, that we’d have that kind of recognition, I would have not believed you. It’s really moving,” Villeneuve said. “If you’re nominated, it’s a beautiful thing… I don’t take things for granted, and I was deeply pleased with what we got.” Villeneuve being shut out of the Best Directors category, which includes Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”), Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”), Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”), Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”) and Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”), is considered one of the biggest snubs ahead of the 94th Academy Awards.
“Dune” star Josh Brolin called out the 2022 Oscars for not including Villeneuve, taking to Twitter to share a video celebrating the “Dune” team.
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“Hey, I just want to say congratulations to legendary Warner Bros., everybody who got nominated for ‘Dune’: editing, cinematography, score, music, writing, pretty much everything,” Brolin said in a Twitter video on February 10. “And the unbelievable, almost numbing, flummoxing, I feel, for Denis Villeneuve not being nominated for Best Director. It’s just one of those things where you go, ‘Huh? What?!’”
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“Dune” has the second highest number of 2022 Oscar nominations, behind Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” with 12 nods. “Dune” is nominated for Best Picture and has nominations in almost every craft category, but no acting recognition nor Best Director.
Seth Rogen similarly voiced bafflement over the Academy Awards in an interview with Paul Rudd.
“I don’t get why movie people care so much if other people care what awards we give ourselves,” Rogen said. “To me, maybe people just don’t care.”
He continued, “I don’t care who wins the automobile awards. No other industry expects everyone to care about what awards they shower upon themselves. Maybe people just don’t care. Maybe they did for a while and they stopped caring. And why should they?”
Warner Bros. has already greenlit the “Dune” sequel with production reportedly starting in fall 2022.
“It’s fantastic news, but it’s also kind of a burden,” Villeneuve told The Hollywood Reporter of the shooting schedule. “The good news is that a lot of the work has been done already regarding design, casting, locations and writing. So we’re not starting from scratch. It’s not a long period of time, but I will try to face that challenge because it’s important for me that the audience sees ‘Part Two’ as soon as possible. It’s not a sequel where it’s another episode or another story with the same characters. It actually has direct continuity to the first movie. It’s the second part of the big huge movie that I’m trying to do. So the sooner the better.”
