While Imax will be a big part of Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of “Dune Messiah,” the filmmaker won’t be shooting the film entirely with the premium format company’s cameras, as was accidentally suggested by Imax CEO Rich Gelfond in a CNBC interview on Monday.
On CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Gelfond was asked for his thoughts on Amazon MGM’s hiring of Villeneuve to direct the next James Bond film after he finishes his “Dune” trilogy. Gelfond praised the filmmaker and expressed his hope that he would continue to work with Imax when he moves on to Bond.
“He’s making ‘Dune,’ the next ‘Dune,’ with Imax cameras. He’s filming the whole thing,” Gelfond said.
Watch the CNBC segment below:
The executive’s quote was interpreted as a suggestion that “Dune 3” will be shot entirely with Imax cameras, which would make it the second film to do so alongside Christopher Nolan’s upcoming 2026 epic “The Odyssey.” But a spokesperson for Imax tells TheWrap that Gelfond misspoke, and that “Dune 3” will use Imax cameras but only for specific scenes as has been industry standard.
The size and cost of Imax cameras, along with the special training cinematographers must go through to use them, has made it so that films that are shot with Imax cameras typically reserve the technology for scenes where the filmmaker wants to convey a larger scope. This could be seen in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” where the director and DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw alternated between shooting key scenes with Imax 70mm cameras and the rest of the film with Ultra Panavision 70mm cameras.
But with Imax’s recent updates to their cameras to make them lighter and relatively easier to use extensively, Nolan has decided to take the leap and use them for every shot of “The Odyssey.” While Villeneuve seems to be using Imax cameras the old-fashioned way for now, time will tell whether other filmmakers will soon follow in Nolan’s footsteps.
