Yahoo News Craig Mazin Is Getting a Writing Credit on ‘Dune: Part 2’
Craig Mazin is getting a writing credit on Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune: Part 2.
During an appearance on the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, which went live on Monday, the Last of Us co-showrunner revealed that he will receive a writing credit on the script, which was co-written by the director and Jon Spaihts.
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Mazin says his involvement with the project came at the behest of Villeneuve himself, as he’s basically “out of the movie business.”
“I’ll work with certain directors when they call because I love them and because they’re so brilliant,” he explained. “So if Denis Villeneuve calls, then absolutely. I’m there for three, four weeks — a month — to work on what you’re working on.”
He said that he came long after the original script and that what he did as a participating writer is the kind of work that used to be “uncredited.”
“You come in, you do a little work, and then you leave,” he says. “It used to be that you couldn’t even say that. But now they have this additional literary material [credit].”
Beginning Jan. 1, 2022, the credit became available to writers that “rendered WGA-covered writing services on theatrical features who do not receive writing credit,” according to the guild. These writers’ names will now appear during a movie’s end credits and on industry databases. Seventy-three percent of voting members supported the credit, with voting taking place in November 2021.
During the podcast, Mazin — who may have let slip how many episodes The Last of Us season two will feature — also spoke to why it now takes television up to two years to render eight episodes, versus the 10 months it used to take for 20-plus episodes.
“The answer is visual effects. The more we use VFX to flesh out worlds and make them spectacular, the longer it takes,” he said. “There is a profound shortage of VFX artists. The VFX companies are overworked, overburdened. There is a company out there that keeps making a lot of — I won’t mention their name — but they’ve been using a lot of VFX. The pipeline has been clogged to the point where everything just takes so much longer to do.”
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