Dune film maestro recalls China influence

After gap of more than three decades, highly successful director returns and talks of 'dream' to work in country, Xu Fan reports.

When Denis Villeneuve, the French-Canadian director best known for his epic sci-fi franchise Dune, visited Beijing earlier this month, he reminisced about his first trip to the country in 1990. Villeneuve, then 22, spent around a month in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, producing a small documentary. This experience offered him an immersive journey into Chinese culture, including tasting local delicacies such as spicy hotpot.

"I said to myself, 'I need to come back as soon as possible', and that was 34 years ago, which is very sad," the director recalls with a touch of nostalgia during a conversation with Guo Fan, director of The Wandering Earth, China's highest-grossing sci-fi franchise.

Villeneuve reveals that he has spoken with his wife, Tanya Lapointe — the producer of the Dune movies — about making a movie in China, which he believes is a means for him to realize the wish he made decades ago.