Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins just work well together. The filmmaker and his trusted cinematographer have worked on “Prisoners,” “Sicario,” and “Blade Runner 2049,” creating three of the best-looking films of the last decade, and perhaps three of the best films during that time-frame, period. And now, with Villeneuve prepping what is probably going to be his biggest production yet, “Dune,” which will no doubt feature some of the most eye-popping visuals of his career, he’s going to do it without Deakins.
According to a recent Twitter post from Kristopher Tapley of Variety, Villeneuve has decided to go with someone else as cinematographer on “Dune,” breaking his streak of three films with Deakins. Apparently, the filmmaker has enlisted Greig Fraser, the Academy Award-nominated director of photography for “Lion,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and most recently, “Vice,” for his upcoming sci-fi epic.
Obviously, Fraser is an accomplished DP in his own right, and any filmmaker would be lucky to have him work on their project, but there’s something that will no doubt be missing from “Dune,” without the eye of one of the best cinematographers of all-time, in Deakins.
The recent tweet also says that there’s another job that Deakins has had before (famously working on “Skyfall“) that he won’t be working on again — James Bond. According to the report, Cary Fukunaga, the new filmmaker for ‘Bond 25,’ has hired Academy Award-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren to be behind the camera of the last Daniel Craig-starring entry in the superspy franchise.
Sandgren is probably best known for his work with filmmaker Damien Chazelle on films “First Man” and “La La Land,” with the latter winning him the Oscar. Most recently, however, Sandgren stepped behind the camera for the Disney film “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.”