Denis Villeneuve got deadly serious when io9 mentioned the Dune Lego set to him. “I’ll be honest with you,” the director of Dune: Part Two said. “Probably I’m making movies because first I was a hardcore Lego player. I’m from that first generation where it was just bricks, right? I went to a lot of places with those Lego spaceships, boats, or whatever. And when I learned that Lego was doing an Ornithopter, I was like, ‘Wow.’ That blew my mind.”
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Lego first announced it was releasing the Atreides Royal Ornithopter from Villenueve’s Dune series back in October. There was one problem though. “Then they sent me a message saying that it was finished and it will be ready for the opening of the movie,” Villeneuve continued. “I said, ‘What are you talking about? It’s not ready for Christmas?’ And they said, ‘No, Mr. Villeneuve, you understand, there is a strategy and it’ll be ready for 2024.’ I was super disappointed because my kids and I [love Lego].”
Thankfully, when you’re the writer and the director of the movie at hand, there are a few perks. “Then, at Christmas, I got a box and they’d sent me a prototype,” Villeneuve said. “I would say I had a blast doing the Ornithopter… It’s amazing.”
Well, with Dune: Part Two coming on March 1, the Ornithopter is finally available. It comes with seven traditional minifigures (Paul Atreides, Lady Jessica, Gurney Halleck, Chani, Leto Atreides, Liet Kynes, and Duncan Idaho) and then a massive, massive version of Baron Harkonnen. “I like him very much,” Stellan Skarsgård told io9 after belly-laughing at an image of his figure, which he’d never seen before. “He stands out.”
What else stands out? Well, our very own editor James Whitbrook provided us with some photos of the finished build and you can see for yourself. Check them out in this slideshow, and check back soon for more from Villeneuve and the cast of Dune: Part Two.
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