Steven Spielberg puts ‘Dune’ franchise director up with filmmaking’s greats

In the latest installment of the Director’s Guild of America’s Director’s Cut podcast, Steven Spielberg put Dune franchise director Denis Villeneuve up with some of the most famous filmmakers of all time.

Spielberg called it “an honor” to sit and talk with the director and showed that by immediately heaping historic praise on him. “Let me start by saying there are filmmakers who are the builders of worlds. It’s not a long list and we know who a lot of them are. Starting with [Georges] Méliès and [Walt] Disney and [Stanley] Kubrick, George Lucas,” Spielberg began.

He continued, “Ray Harryhausen I include in that list. [Federico] Fellini built his own worlds. Tim Burton. Obviously, Wes Anderson, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro. The list goes on but it’s not that long of a list, and I deeply, fervently believe that you are one of its newest members.”

Oscar winner Spielberg, who knows a little something about the genre, with the classics E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, went on to call the second Dune “one of the most brilliant science fiction films I’ve ever seen.”

He also called the scene with Timothée Chalamet‘s Paul Atreides riding a massive sandworm in the sequel “one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Ever!”

Later in the conversation, Spielberg asked Villeneuve if he could see any of his Dune cast members directing one day. Denis immediately answered that the “brilliant” Zendaya was “always listening” behind the camera and said he “would not be surprised” if she becomes a director.