Friday, 13 November 2026, 17:13
The editor says he wrapped work on the third Dune film two or three weeks before the interview. His next project is editing Villeneuve’s upcoming James Bond film.
At the ToruńCamerimage film festival, where he received this year’s Editor Award, Joe Walker discussed finishing Dune: Part Three and his work with director Denis Villeneuve and filmmaker Steve McQueen. “For a British editor, as you can imagine, Bond is pretty high on my bucket list,” he said of his next project: editing Villeneuve’s upcoming James Bond.
Walker began his career as a sound editor at the BBC and trained as a classical composer. He has edited Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave for McQueen, and Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and the Dune films for Villeneuve. He was Oscar-nominated for 12 Years a Slave and Arrival, then won the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Film Editing in 2022 for Dune.
Walker said he finished work on Dune: Part Three about two or three weeks before the interview. His assistant was still checking the 70mm prints, matching the grading and ensuring that every blue eye looked blue. Walker had signed off on the main formats: 2.20 [70mm], 1.90 [digital IMAX], 1.43 [full-frame IMAX 70mm], D-vision [Dolby Vision], the IMAX mix and the Atmos mix. “The number of versions you have to do gets insane,” he said.
The team finished cutting in the summer, Walker said. After cutting, the process includes another two or three months of dubbing, writing the music and finishing the visual effects. The film was designed for an IMAX experience but also had to work in other formats, with both framings considered on set and both aspect ratios mastered. Walker thought only 41 screens would be able to show the full film in IMAX, but said the effort involved was no different from that for the 2.20 version most people would see.
Walker said the third film differs from the first two and may surprise audiences. Its story takes place almost two decades after the events of Part Two, and the film has a new look and pace. It was shot for faster cutting, he said; the contemplative approach of Part One did not fit this story.
The production’s scale has also increased. Walker said the second film had, he thought, a 44-day worm shoot, while the third had almost 100 days of worm. He could not give the exact figure, but said there was “a huge amount of worm.”
Walker said the production team tried to build and film as much as possible, rather than create it digitally. The castle sets were built to scale by production designer Patrice Vermette. For the worm scenes, a substantial part of the creature was filmed on a gimbal and then filled out later, with wind, effects and sound effects. Walker described actors having many things thrown at them.
Recalling work on Dune: Part Two, Walker said he would see people at the end of the day “just covered in shit” and think he had chosen the right career. He was working in an air-conditioned room, he said, and perhaps his latte had gone a little cold.
Walker described pace as both a surface quality and something deeper: “the long tectonic plates that move in a story.” He said the Dune films all have densely packed worlds, but the third has an especially epic story, perhaps within a shorter time frame than the others. “It’s a different book,” he said.
Walker also connected the Dune story to the festival’s focus on AI. Frank Herbert’s fictional world is based on a society without computers. Its history includes the Butlerian Jihad, an anti-AI jihad thousands of years before the events of the book. Walker said the idea was not so much about machines killing people as about machines taking away people’s independence and ability to predict.
In Dune, Mentats are people whose brains function like computers, performing complex mathematical calculations and making predictions, particularly in military contexts. Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet, is the product of a breeding program intended to create someone able to predict the future. Walker said he found it amusing that these ideas form such a substantial part of Herbert’s novel, published in 1965, nearly 60 years ago.
Walker said he sees more in common than differences between directors. He has worked predominantly with McQueen and Villeneuve, and said both filmmakers’ understanding of human beings is fundamental to their approach.
Villeneuve does extensive planning, particularly on large-scale films, Walker said. The process usually starts with the script and also involves storyboards. Villeneuve works with Toronto-based storyboard artist Sam Hudecki; they sketch out scenes and revise the script based on what they discover. Walker said they test the material and develop the ideas that emerge. Two of his most important guides are the art book he receives from Vermette and the storyboards.
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