Zendaya Eyes Best Actress Oscar Bid for Dune: Part Three

With awards season taking shape well ahead of the 99th Academy Awards, one of the more consequential positioning decisions involves Zendaya and her evolution within Denis Villeneuve's Dune saga. According to IGN, the actress will campaign in the Best Actress category for her performance as Chani in Dune: Part Three — a meaningful departure from the supporting-category strategy employed during the first two films.

From the Margins to the Center

The reclassification is not merely a tactical maneuver; it reflects a fundamental transformation of the character herself. Chani occupied a relatively peripheral role across the first two installments, powerful in moments but ultimately orbiting Paul Atreides' mythic ascent. Dune: Part Three, which draws from Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah, appears to position her as a genuine protagonist in her own right. As IGN's coverage notes, Chani in this chapter is no longer Paul's devoted companion waiting in the wings — she has rejected him and the quasi-religious movement he embodies, choosing instead to live as an autonomous Fremen, beholden to no one. That is a character arc with genuine dramatic weight, and the kind of interiority that Oscar voters historically reward.

It's worth recalling that neither Dune film, for all their technical grandeur and critical admiration, produced a single acting nomination from the Academy or the Hollywood Foreign Press. Both pictures accumulated hardware in craft categories — cinematography, editing, sound — but their human performances went formally unrecognized on the awards circuit. A Best Actress push for Chani represents an attempt to finally bring the acting work inside Villeneuve's desert epic into that conversation.

A Crowded Awards Landscape

Of course, ambition and positioning do not guarantee traction. The industry forecasters at GoldDerby currently do not list Zendaya among their leading contenders in either of the Academy's actress categories — not for Dune: Part Three, nor for any of her 2026 releases. That is notable given the scope of her year: she starred in two of the highest-grossing films of 2026 in Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey, while also earning praise for her dramatic work in The Drama. For The Odyssey specifically, GoldDerby's current attention falls on Zendaya's co-stars Anne Hathaway and Samantha Morton, who are seen as the likelier Supporting Actress nominees from that production.

Where GoldDerby does see potential for Zendaya is on the television and comedy sides of the awards calendar. They have her in contention for a Golden Globe nomination as Best Film Comedy/Musical Actress for The Drama, as well as TV Drama Actress recognition for the final season of Euphoria — a category in which she also figures in their Screen Actors Guild projections.

The Broader Picture for a Banner Year

Zendaya's position heading into this awards cycle is genuinely unusual — few performers in recent memory have juggled franchise blockbusters, prestige drama, and a landmark television finale simultaneously. The Odyssey alone represented a significant creative swing, and her work across these projects collectively makes a case for range that is difficult to dismiss.

The Academy, meanwhile, has updated its rules ahead of the ceremony, among them a provision allowing a single actor to earn multiple nominations within the same category — a structural change that broadens the theoretical possibilities for prolific performers in a given year.

The 99th Academy Awards will air live on ABC and Hulu on Sunday, March 14, 2027, at 7 p.m. ET, with Conan O'Brien returning for his third consecutive year as host. Whether Zendaya's Chani ultimately breaks through the acting ceiling that has eluded the Dune franchise remains to be seen — but the conversation, at minimum, has meaningfully changed.