Denis Villeneuve throws shade at Oscars over Dune Part Two snub

Denis Villeneuve has gone public with his frustration over Dune Part Two being ineligible for one of the most prestigious Academy Awards at the upcoming ceremony.

The Dune movies have been the definition of critical and commercial success. The first film won six Oscars, carries a Rotten Tomatoes score of 83%, and grossed more than $400 million worldwide.

Dune: Part Two then dwarfed those numbers, making more than $700 million while becoming one of the biggest box office hits of 2024, and hitting a whopping 92% on the Tomatometer.

With the Oscar nominations just days away, the film is expected to appear in multiple categories, but there’s one in which Dune 2 definitely won’t appear.

Dune director “absolutely against” score’s exclusion

That’s because Hans Zimmer’s Dune: Part Two score has been disqualified from the Oscars for featuring too much musical material from the first film. And director Denis Villeneuve isn’t happy.

“I am absolutely against the decision of the Academy to exclude Hans, frankly, because I feel like his score is one of the best scores of the year,” Villeneuve said at a Director’s Guild screening (as reported by SlashFilm). “I don’t use the word genius often, but Hans is one.”

The original Dune score won Zimmer the Academy Award in 2022, while his Dune: Part Two work was nominated at the Golden Globes, where it lost to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Challengers effort.

But Villeneuve also admitted that the score is “rooted in Part One, of course, because there is a continuity,” stating that the two films represent “one big movie that is cut in half.”

He finally emphasized that he isn’t holding a grudge by starting: “I’m not here to complain. The soundtrack is really a continuity of Part One.”

Fore more Dune action, here’s the questions Dune: Prophecy leaves unanswered, plus news of a potential Dune 4, once Villeneuve has finished work on Dune Messiah.