Back in June 2019, it was announced that Denis Villeneuve would be making a prequel series for his, at the time unreleased, adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. At the time, it was said Villeneuve would be directing the pilot but now, it has been announced that Emmy winning director Johan Renck has signed on to direct the first two episodes of Dune: The Sisterhood.
The series is said to expand upon the extensive lore fans love from both the film and the iconic novel series. Dune: The Sisterhood will be set 10,000 years before the events of the movie. It will focus on the Bene Gesserit, a sisterhood of pseudo-magical women in the Dune universe who possess incredible powers. The series will explore the origins of the group, which even in the novel series has remained mysterious. For viewers of the movie, Paul’s (Timothée Chalamet) mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) was a member of the Bene Gesserit.
Renck started his directing career working on music videos. Directing for Madonna, Beyonce, and David Bowie. He then moved to television directing episodes of The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and Vikings. Renck recently gained a lot of praise after he directed every episode of the critically acclaimed HBO historical drama Chernobyl. He is currently working on a science fiction adventure film Spaceman, starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Isabella Rossellini, Kunal Nayyar, and Paul Dano.
The series was originally set to have Jon Spaihts, who co-wrote the film, serve as showrunner, but he stepped away to focus on writing the sequel. Diane Ademu-John was then brought on to replace him. Ademu-John has previously worked on series like The Haunting of Bly Manor, Empire, and The Originals. Ademu-John will serve as an executive producer alongside Villeneuve, Spaihts, Renck, Scott Z. Burns, Mark Friedman, Matthew King, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, and Kim Herbert.
Dune is a science fiction series that began when the first novel by Herbert was published in 1965. Herbert would go on to write six novels in total for the series. After his passing, Herbert’s son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson began writing new novels in the universe based on Herbert’s original notes. In total there are twenty-four books in the series. The series has also been adapted before Villeneuve’s movie, first by David Lynch in 1984 and again as a pair of three-part miniseries called Frank Herbert’s Dune in 2000 and Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune in 2003.
Dune: The Sisterhood will stream exclusively on HBOMax. Currently, the show has no announced cast or release date. Stay tuned to Collider for any updates.
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