Festival Goers and cinema lovers gathering outside Venice’s Sala Grande cinema as the first screening was underway reported hearing the film’s booming Hans Zimmer score reverberating through the theater’s walls. Moments later, Chalamet created a genuine frenzy outside the Lido’s Casino building when he emerged from the first Dune press conference to a sea of adoring, screaming Chala-maniacs. The young star played to the crowd, smiling and waving, with each gesture eliciting a roar before he stepped aboard a waiting Vaporetto and was whisked away down a canal.
The pitch of the early buzz will be welcome news to co-producers Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros., given that the hugely ambitious sci-fi project reportedly clocked in with a production budget of $165 million — money that will need to be recouped before the Ornithopter blades get whirring on the possible second installment of the two-part, tentpole adaptation — something Chalamet said would be a “dream” to make in the press conference. But if the early energy on the Lido is anything to go by, Dune appears to be blasting off with a roar.
Jaw-dropping gorgeous to watch, rousing to experience,” tweeted writer Lorenzo Ciorcalo. “It pumps and pumps and pumps that spice in your veins. Ferguson is commanding, intense as usual. Chalamet gives his best in such a subdued action role. Geometric elegance in chaos.”
Meanwhile, Marvin Wiechart of Germany’s Yorck Kinogruppe cinema chain said the film was “out-of-this-world in every sense of the word and a theatrical experience unlike any other.” He added that watching the film in Venice felt like it was “like witnessing history, this is one of the few films that are bound to shape the decade in cinema.”
