Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve began his filmmaking career with stylish, charged Canadian-Quebecois dramas and has evolved into the maker of elegantly staged and thoughtful Hollywood sci-fi epics, including Arrival (2016) and his versions of Frank Herbert’s first novel in the series, Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024).

After four years of making shorts and music videos, Villeneuve made his writer-director feature debut with August 32^nd of Earth (1998), co-starring Pascale Bussières and Alexis Martin, and premiering in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section and selected by Canada as the French-language submission to the Oscar’s best foreign language film race. Villeneuve’s next movie as writer-director, the absurdist drama Maelstrom (2000), which was also submitted by Canada for the Oscar foreign-language contest, and co-starred Marie-Josée Croze and Jean-Nicolas Verrault, but failed enough at the box office that it prompted Villeneuve to step away from feature directing for nine years.

Denis Villeneuve returned to the big screen with his startling, tragic Polytechnique (2009), his cool depiction of the 1989 “Montreal Massacre” of students at Ecole Polytechnique by an anti-feminist male gunman, co-starring Maxim Gaudette, Sebastien Huberdeau, Karine Vanasse, and Evelyne Brochu, and premiering at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight competition. Villeneuve co-adapted Wajdi Mouawad’s play, Incendies (2010), with screenwriter Valerie Beaugrand-Champagne, set during a civil war in an unnamed Levantine country (representing Lebanon) and co-starring Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Gaudette, and Rémy Girard, while premiering at the Venice film festival, winning eight Genie (Canada) Awards, including Best Picture, and grossing a profitable $16 million.

Villeneuve made his first English-language and director-only movie with the abduction drama, Prisoners (2013), co-starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, and with Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano, and grossing a strong worldwide number of $122 million after premiering at the Telluride film festival. Director Villeneuve continued his work with Gyllenhaal in a loose, atmospheric adaptation (by writer Javier Gullón) of Jose Saramago’s surrealist novel, The Double, titled Enemy (2013), co-starring Melanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, and Isabella Rossellini, and earning $3.5 million for Canadian, Spanish, and French producers.

Denis Villeneuve began a continuous Hollywood-backed run as director of Lionsgate’s successful Mexican drug cartel thriller, Sicario (2015), written by Taylor Sheridan, starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin, and competing in the main selection of the Cannes film festival, before tripling its costs with an $85 million worldwide return. Villeneuve began his streak, as director only, of a string of remarkable sci-fi movies with his stunning Arrival (2016), starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Tzi Ma, and based on Ted Chiang’s story, “Story of Your Life,” and after premiering at the Venice film festival, the movie amassed eight Oscar nominations and grossed an excellent $203.4 million globally.

As director only, Villeneuve tackled the much-anticipated sequel (co-written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, and Jared Leto, and though it won two Oscars (cinematography, visual effects), it lost money for Warner Bros. with a $267.5 million.

Denis Villeneuve was director/writer/producer of Warner Bros.’ massive project of adapting Frank Herbert’s cult sci-fi epic novel, Dune, which covered just the first half of the book and was made without firm plans for a sequel (and shot in 2020 but delayed for release until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), and which starred Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem, leading to a bullish $402 million global gross after a Venice film festival premiere.

That commercial success greenlit Villeneuve to make the second half of Herbert’s novel, Dune: Part Two, with new cast members Christopher Walken, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, and Léa Seydoux, and produced on a $122 million budget. Director Villeneuve then joined with producers Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal for a new version of the epic, Cleopatra (date to be announced), based on Stacy Schiff’s novel. Villeneuve proceeded to develop another massively-scaled sci-fi epic with an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s award-winning novel, Rendezvous with Rama (date to be announced).