"Dune 2" director Villeneuve: "Blade Runner 2049" was stressful and I still suffer from insomnia

Dune 2 director Denis Villeneuve, who has completed the second film in his adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic, recently revealed that another sequel he was directing was actually far more challenging than his new film, and it even gives him sleepless nights.

That film is the critically acclaimed Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the 1982 film directed by Ridley Scott. Villeneuve told The Hollywood Reporter: "Blade Runner is one of my favorite films, it's an absolute masterpiece. Ridley Scott is one of my favorite filmmakers, and even though he gave me his blessing, it was very important for me to hear from him and see from him that he agreed to let me do this film at that time. But I was thinking about the original film while I was making Blade Runner 2049. It was impossible not to think about it."

“2049 is really a love letter to the first film, but it’s also one of the most difficult projects I’ve ever worked on, and I don’t think I’ll ever go even close to a universe created by someone else again. I still wake up at night sometimes and ask myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I turned down a couple other projects of a similar scale, but at the time I said to myself, ‘This is a crazy project, but it’s worth the risk of losing everything.’”

Villeneuve’s filmmaking skills and love for movies are reflected in the box office success. Although "Blade Runner 2049" reportedly lost $80 million (259 million global box office, costing more than 150 million, mainly because the subject matter and themes did not cater to mainstream audiences), "Dune 2" has broken the opening weekend box office record in 2024, and the first week box office was twice that of the first film.