Timothée Chalamet's Dune 3 Trailer Release Tease Puts The Franchise In Uncharted Territory

The first Dune: Part Three trailer is coming soon, according to global star Timothée Chalamet, which is very surprising given the franchise's history. Legendary and Warner Bros. have kept the third chapter in Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi series largely under wraps. Several expected characters are missing from the Dune 3 cast, and almost no set photos surfaced during production, either. We don't even know for sure what the title is.

All this is bound to change once the threequel's marketing campaign kicks off. And that is happening sooner than expected. Chalamet recently told the French talk show Quotidien that the first Dune 3 trailer is on the horizon. He said (translated from French to English), "We have a trailer coming soon that I just watched, and it's awesome."

With Dune 3 not coming out until December 18, there was no real expectation that a trailer was imminent. The franchise is moving into uncharted territory to promote the third, and possibly final, entry in this sci-fi saga.

Dune 3's Trailer Releasing Soon Would Defy The Franchise's Norm

When talking about Dune 3's marketing strategy, it's worth looking back at how the franchise has been handled previously. And after digging through it all, a teaser for the third film coming in the next few weeks or even months would be unconventional.

WB and Legendary waited until 100 days before Dune's original release date (December 18, 2020) to drop the first trailer, which happened on September 9, 2020. But the film was then delayed nine months to October 22, 2021, putting the marketing campaign on hold. When they restarted it with the second trailer (but first post-delay), that came 92 days before the new release date.

After the success of Dune, the studios looked to give Dune: Part Two a longer spotlight. The first Dune 2 trailer came out on May 3, 2023, which was 184 days before its release date at the time of November 3, 2023. Legendary and WB even got a second trailer out at the end of June before delaying the film to March 15, 2024, due to the Hollywood strikes.

When it came time for the studios to restart the sequel's marketing campaign, they returned to the first film's strategy of doing a trailer roughly three months ahead of release. Dune 2's third trailer (but first post-delay) came out on December 12, 2023, 94 days before its 2024 theatrical release.

This all suggests that Dune 3's first trailer shouldn't come until September, somewhere between 90 and 100 days before its release date. If Chalamet is telling the truth about the first look coming soon (and he has no reason to lie), then it will come possibly six months earlier than expected.

Even if we look at Dune 2's original marketing schedule as the blueprint, a Dune 3 trailer wouldn't be expected until mid-June. So no matter how you look at it, Legendary and WB are poised to give one of 2026's most anticipated movies a gigantic push that runs throughout most of the calendar year.

Why Dune 3's First Trailer May Be Coming So Much Earlier

The studios' switching up the marketing strategy for the third Dune movie to such a degree could be tied to several factors.

For starters, a potentially 10-month-long campaign would go a long way in positioning Dune 3 as a must-see cinematic experience for audiences, one that they are reminded is coming consistently, rather than just receiving a late-game push. This is one of Warner Bros.'s biggest releases of the year, so it'd make some sense for them to go all-out promoting it to ensure the trilogy ends on a high note at the box office (topping Dune 2's $714 million haul).

This could also be necessary given the stiff competition Dune 3 will face. It's well publicized that it will go head-to-head with Avengers: Doomsday, with Chalamet and Robert Downey Jr. playing into the "Dunesday" double-feature possibilities already. The Marvel movie started its marketing campaign in December, so there might be a need to start promoting the next chapter in Paul Atreides' story now so it doesn't get lost.

It will be able to have a trailer play in front of most tentpole movies this spring and summer, especially fellow IMAX releases, to really make audiences aware of its release later this year. Should this happen, Dune 3 would notably join Doomsday and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey as 2026 movies that could have nearly year-long marketing campaigns.

I'm also not discounting the possibility that Dune 3's trailer arriving soon is a sign that it will bow out of the "Dunesday" showdown and move its release up. The film could move up to, say, October (Warner Bros. has Tom Cruise's Digger dated for Oct. 2) if it won't put a strain on the post-production. That'd possibly allow a fall festival premiere for the buzzy blockbuster (and for Villeneuve to move to Bond commitments faster).

Should the release date move up by about two months, then we're not as far away from Dune: Part Three being able to have a similar marketing schedule as its predecessor. The movie will likely still have the franchise's longest campaign to date, but it could all come within a seven-month timeframe rather than the nine or ten-month schedule it otherwise could be on.