Craig Mazin has not seen the last of his film screenwriting career.
The “Last of Us” co-showrunner revealed during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that “Dune: Part Two” writer-director Denis Villeneuve reached out to Mazin to spend a month assisting on the script for the sequel starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, and Florence Pugh.
Mazin noted that Villeneuve personally called him since Mazin is “out of the movie business” almost entirely and focused on TV.
“I’ll work with certain directors when they call because I love them and because they’re so brilliant,” Mazin said. “So if Denis Villeneuve calls, then absolutely. I’m there for three, four weeks — a month — to work on what you’re working on.”
“Dune: Part Two” is co-written by Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, with Mazin now receiving a writing credit. The film follows Paul (Chalamet) as he seeks revenge for the murder of his father while trying to bring peace to Arrakis.
Mazin noted that his work on the “Dune: Part Two” script is what would have previously been deemed “uncredited” in Hollywood. However, as of January 2022, the WGA announced that writers’ names would appear during a film’s end credits and on industry databases for work that “rendered WGA-covered writing services on theatrical features who do not receive writing credit,” as the official guild page stated.
“You come in, you do a little work, and then you leave. It used to be that you couldn’t even say that,” Mazin said. “But now they have this additional literary material [credit].”
Mazin previously wrote HBO limited series “Chernobyl,” which starred “Dune” actor Stellan Skarsgård.
“In television creatively, more than a lot of movies where the directors are important, screenwriters are important,” Mazin told IndieWire’s Anne Thompson in 2019.
The showrunner also received admiration from Steven Spielberg, who sent a letter to the “Last of Us” team praising the series’ writing.
“[An actual Spielberg letter] came to Craig Mazin, the writer of my episode on ‘The Last of Us’ — the writer of all the episodes,” director Peter Hoar said during a recent THR roundtable. “He shared it with myself, [actors] Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett and [cinematographer] Eben Bolter. Basically, a whole group of middle-aged men started squealing because their idol had realized who they were.”
