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Robert Pattinson breaks silence on filming Dune: Part Three

Pattinson plays Scytale in the upcoming end to Villeneuve's trilogy.
Alex Hopley Editor UK 4 November 2025

There's just over a year to go until we see Dune: Part Three, and so it's understandable that we've seen markedly little from the film. A shot from lead actor Timothée Chalamet there, a nod from director Denis Villeneuve here. Someone we've not really heard from at all is Robert Pattinson, who's set to play the villain Scytale in the movie.

Speaking with IndieWire, Pattinson dropped a bit of information about the filming process of Dune: Part Three, saying it was so hot in the desert he couldn't really think. "When I was doing Dune it was so hot in the desert that I just couldn't question anything. And it was so relaxing, like my brain actually wasn't operating, I did not have a single functioning brain cell. And I was just listening to Denis [Villeneuve]: 'Whatever you want!'" he said.

Pattinson is one of the busiest men in Hollywood right now. He said in the same interview he's done around 19 movies back-to-back, and so it's easy to see why he might have not had many functioning brain cells while in the set Villeneuve was using for Arrakis. Still, he says he'll be taking this new method "into other roles."

Scytale is a Tleilaxu face dancer and the antagonist of Dune: Messiah. As someone who can change his appearance almost at will, he'll try and take down our boy Paul Atreides in the next film. We'll have to see how Pattinson approaches a Dune villain that could outshine even Austin Butler's Feyd-Rautha.

Editor UK Alex Hopley covered the video game industry for Gamereactor, from new announcements and launches to the business behind them. He also wrote on tech, film and entertainment, and his coverage wasn't tied to any one region.
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