We’re not going to be seeing the fairly important Spacing Guild navigators in the upcoming Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures release of “Dune.” We’re a little taken aback by this declaration from artist, conceptual designer and Denis Villeneuve collaborator, Carlos Huante.
Huante worked with Villeneuve on “Arrival,” and apparently did some early concept work for the sandworms in “Dune.” During a recent chat with Who’s Nick, he revealed that he isn’t sure if his work will be featured at all in the film.
And, that Villeneuve will NOT have the Navigators as part of “Dune.”
Here’s what Huante said about it:
“Trust me, when Denis told me that [the guild navigators aren’t in the movie], when he told me that, I just sort of looked at him and went ‘WHAT!.’ And he goes [in a fairly good approximation of Denis’ accent] ‘Carlos, I know you’re going to get mad at me, but it’s too much. We need to make it smaller so we can tell this story well.’ But you can’t do that man, you’ve got to put them in there! ‘Ok well do a design for me, and then maybe you will change my mind.’ And I’m like ok, and I did. I went around and around, and I finally came to it by the end of the week that I was allowed to work on it. And he saw it, and he goes ‘Carlos, this is him. This is the navigator.’ So alright, he’s in, right? ‘I can’t promise.’ And I’m like WHAT, so I don’t think it did. I mean I know for a fact that it [the navigator] won’t be in the movie. It’ll be in the next one.”
This is a pretty big deal, because as fans of the books and the original film will tell you, the Navigators are the primary user of the Spice Melange, and their holdings on space travel due to the Spice is one of the biggest motivations for everything that happens on Arrakis.
We cannot fathom why they would not be featured, unless it’s something being saved for the second part (since Villenueve is splitting Frank Herbert‘s first “Dune” book into two films).
So, we’re hopeful we’ll be seeing the Navigators in the second half of the story, as well as notable characters that are surprisingly absent from this first part.
“I did not say this, I was not here.”
