Dune Director Teases HBO Max Spinoff Show The Sisterhood

Denis Villeneuve teases HBO Max’s upcoming Dune prequel series, though he doesn’t wish to give away too much. Many have tried their hand at bringing Frank Herbert’s seminal 1965 novel Dune to life before, most notably David Lynch, but few have actually managed to capture the grand scope of the world he created. Villeneuve will be the latest to send Dune to the big screen, and this time, he has a lot of plans for expanding the franchise. In addition to splitting the book up into two movies, Villeneuve is helping develop a prequel series for HBO Max.

Titled Dune: The Sisterhood, the project will center on the Bene Gesserit, a mysterious order of women who possess extraordinary abilities. Villeneuve is on board as executive producer and the pilot director, while Diane Ademu-John signed on as showrunner back in July. Dune: The Sisterhood has been in development since 2019, but as the movie itself was pushed back from 2020 to 2021, progress appeared to have slowed. Few updates have emerged since Ademu-John’s hiring, but Villeneuve seems pleased with how things are going.

While speaking to Variety about what lies ahead for Dune, Villeneuve briefly touched upon The Sisterhood. He was first asked if a younger version of Lady Jessica (played by Rebecca Ferguson in the film) would appear on the show, as she is a member of the Bene Gesserit. Villeneuve chose not to answer that, but he did say, “It’s a beautiful project, but it’s in development.” To explain his hesitance to say more, he added, “And when things are in development, I have a tendency, I want to protect them because it’s in a fragile state.“

Dune: The Sisterhood received a straight to series order when it was first announced. Nevertheless, it makes sense for HBO Max and Warner Bros. to wait until Dune itself has been released to reveal more about the show. While there might not be spoilers baked into the plot, Herbert’s world is a dense one for newcomers, and it seems smarter to wait until audiences have seen the movie before giving them more of Arrakis. Villeneuve himself must want to hold onto the secrets of Dune: The Sisterhood until the proper time.

Dune will arrive in theaters and on HBO Max this fall, and it brings with it a great deal of expectations. As a sci-fi epic, there would already be some concerns about winning over viewers less inclined to check out the genre. Nowadays, major releases are on much shakier ground because of the pandemic, hence Warner Bros.’ decision to send Dune to HBO Max. The early buzz for the movie is mixed, but skewing favorable, so it could just be that the prequel series will be greeted with a great deal of excitement. Villeneuve and the rest will find out soon enough.

Source: Variety

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Rachel Labonte
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Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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