Don’t be fooled by director Denis Villeneuve’s insistence that his Dune adaptation is going to be “Star Wars for adults,” because it’s going to be just as much of a multimedia franchise as regular Star Wars—just not one with any BB-8s or Babu Friks. The movie, which just got a new trailer, is coming out later this year, but HBO Max has been quietly working in the background on a Dune prequel series titled Dune: The Sisterhood. The project seemingly stalled years ago when originally showrunner Jon Spaihts stepped down to focus on working on the not-yet-greenlit sequel to Villeneuve’s Dune, but now it’s back on with The Haunting Of Bly Manor writer Diane Ademu-John signing on to become the new writer and showrunner.
The series will focus on the Bene Gesserit, a “mysterious order of women” who have developed “extraordinary abilities by their mastery of the body and the mind.” Variety says it will all be building up to the discovery of the planet Arrakis, a.k.a. the place in the trailer with all of the, you know, big hills of sand. Villeneuve is set to direct the first episode of the series, which also has the estate of original Dune author Frank Herbert on board to executive produce.
Dune: The Sisterhood is but one entry in a long line of HBO Max movie tie-ins, which also includes The Suicide Squad spin-off Peacemaker with John Cena (a prequel to that movie) and some kind of The Batman tie-in that is definitely not Fox’s Gotham even though it sounds like the same basic idea as Fox’s Gotham—which, to be fair, was a basic idea that was lifted from Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s Gotham Central comic books. The show will be about cops in Gotham, but last we heard, it was still unclear if anyone from Matt Reeves’ The Batman would actually stop by.