Denis Villeneuve: it will be a sprint to finish Dune on time

Denis Villeneuve has admitted it will be a "sprint" to "finish" 'Dune' on time.

The director's adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel is slated for release in December, but the filmmaker has admitted it's going to take a lot of work to make the date because he has other elements of the movie to shoot to "readjust" the flick.

The global pandemic afforded him extra time to sit on the additional photography required, but now he's found himself playing catch-up.

Villeneuve is quoted by IndieWire as saying: "We were about to finish some shooting ... the movie was like almost finished. 'Dune' has been made in an unusual way which is that we made the main shooting, and then I edited that part of the movie and I was planning to go back to shoot some elements later because I wanted to readjust the movie - I needed time, and it's a luxury that I had [before the pandemic] ... When the virus hit North America as we were about to go back to do those elements."

The quarantine situation also meant that Villeneuve had to work on VFX and editing remotely with his editor, which has been particularly challenging.

He continued: "The impact was that it crushed my schedule right now. It will be a sprint to finish the movie on time right now. We were allowed to go back to shoot - we're going back to shoot those elements in a few weeks, [the ones] we were supposed to shoot earlier. It meant that I also had to finish some elements of the movie like VFX and the editing being in Montreal as my crew stayed in Los Angeles."

He added: "I will say as a director there are things that can be done remotely to deal with technology, all the supervision of VFX with some equipment is kind of easy to do from afar ... for me the big lesson of this is I thought that it would be possible to edit at a distance having my editor [Joe Walker] sharing with computers, being far from one another, but I realise how much editing is like playing music with someone and you need to be in the same room. I mean there's something about the interaction, human interaction, spontaneity, the energy in the room. I really miss not being in the same room with my editor."

The remake stars the likes of Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, and Oscar Isaac.