Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides may be firmly ensconced as the Padishah Emperor, but as thrilling new footage from “Dune: Part Three” that Warner Bros. and Legendary released at CinemaCon on Tuesday makes clear, ruling the galaxy comes at great cost. Particularly if that means you can’t run off into the sunset with the woman you actually love, Chani (Zendaya), and instead have to be trapped in a marriage of political necessity to Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan. Oh, and your followers have launched a jihad in your name that’s causing the body count to climb to dizzying heights.

Director Denis Villeneuve and three of his stars, Chalamet, Zendaya and Jason Momoa, took the stage in Las Vegas to introduced a seven-minute long clip of the opening scene of “Dune: Part III” — and things get violent, loud and deadly, fast.

“Dune: Part Three” picks up 17 years after the prior installment, and Chalamet said that his Paul has become “his worst vision.” At one point in the footage, Momoa’s character tells Paul: “You have conquered the galaxy. You have destroyed thousands of worlds. I think you are way beyond redemption.”

Even though Paul’s life has gotten more complicated and his hold over the Fremen has grown more toxic, “Dune: Part Three” promises the same epic sweep of the first two films in the franchise. Clearly, Villeneuve knows how to turn an impenetrable and famously difficult literary material into something truly cinematic and sweeping.

“Dune: Part Three” brings back many cast-members from the previous films, such as Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem, and gives some performers, notably Anya Taylor-Joy, substantially more to do. There’s also some new additions like Robert Pattinson as the villainous Scytale, and one notable returnee — Momoa, resurrected as a ghola.

Warner Bros. went all out with “Dune” as the conclusion to its CinemaCon presentation. The studio brought out dozens of Fremen — some of whom were dangling from the ceiling on wires — to grace the stage before Villeneuve took the stage to introduce the “Dune 3” footage.

Villeneuve teased that “Part III” will take the story in a new direction. “I didn’t want to walk in my own footsteps,” he said. “I wanted to do something new.” The filmmaker described the first movie “more meditative, more contemplative” and the second as “a war movie.” With that in mind, Villeneuve says the third is a thriller. “It’s more action-packed, faster paced, and more emotional.”

Villeneuve spoke fondly about wrapping up the decade-long journey to bring the “Dune” franchise to the screen. “It was quite emotional for me to bring them back one last time in front of the camera and say farewell to Paul and Chani in the desert. We became like a small family. This was 10 years of our life.”

Chalamet noted he’s “grown up” on the set of these films and called it “a deep honor, if not the biggest honor of my career to work with the one, Denis Villeneuve,” adding that the director is “on another level.”

Villeneuve, who will soon be making the next James Bond movie, has promised “Dune: Part Three” will bring Paul’s arc to a satisfying conclusion. That doesn’t necessarily mean giving him a happy ending.

“Dune: Part Three” will open in theaters on Dec. 18, 2026.