A brand new series titled Dune: The Sisterhood has been greenlit for WarnerMedia’s new streaming platform. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the intent of the series is to explore the universe of Dune through the eyes of the Bene Gesserit, the secretive female order at the heart of the series.
Denis Villeneuve (who is writing, directing and producing the Dune film) will direct the pilot of the series. The Hollywood Reporter continues:
Jon Spaihts will pen the script for the TV series, which hails from Legendary Television. Villeneuve and Spaihts will executive produce alongside Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt and Kim Herbert for the Frank Herbert estate. Kevin J. Anderson will co-produce. Spaihts co-wrote the screenplay alongside Villeneuve.
Villeneuve had this to say on the project and his choice to single out the Bene Gesserit for television:
“The Bene Gesserit have always been fascinating to me. Focusing a series around that powerful order of women seemed not only relevant and inspiring but a dynamic setting for the television series.”
The series will be among the first original shows for the new WarnerMedia streaming service, which will include all Warner-owned content, including HBO, TBS, TNT, and CNN properties. This follows a move by WarnerMedia to expand Dune into an entertainment empire that will eventually extend to comics and video games. The first film—possibly one of two to encompass the original Dune novel—is set for release on November 20th, 2020.
There are a few aspects of this project that give me pause. First off, the suggestion is that this series is meant to cover Bene Gesserit machinations set during and around the events of Dune itself, which would indicate that the film(s) is not planning on focusing on them to the same extent. Not only does this seem like a mistake from a narrative perspective, given the importance of their actions within the central story, but it also smacks of believing that the stories of women and female characters are not interesting or wide-reaching enough to give them a place on the big screen. They are being pushed to television instead.
More importantly, this is a series about the most powerful women within the Dune universe… and the only woman involved in production so far appears to be author Frank Herbert’s granddaughter, Kim Herbert, who is representing Herbert’s estate alongside her father and cousin. Villeneuve is developing the show, and the sole writer attached in a man. A man responsible for the Passengers screenplay, I might add, which didn’t exactly do well by its central female character. Announcing projects like these with no female creatives attached never inspires a great deal of confidence. It’s 2019; we shouldn’t have to have the conversation anymore.
More information to come, but an awkward foot forward from Dune‘s ever-expanding franchise.
I second your concern about the lack of women involved behind the camera. I don’t think a series focusing on the B.G. necessarily means the new movie(s) will push them to the side, though, any more than S.H.I.E.L.D. disappeared from MCU films once Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hit TV screens. It could go that way, but if the creative team is smart, it won’t. I think it sounds like a neat concept, since I’ve always found the B.G pretty interesting, too, and would love to delve more into their mysteries than the plot of Dune itself has space for. So here’s hoping!
No.
Oh hell no.
Another streaming platform…omg
It doesn’t say it will be concurrent with the film, I don’t think that’s the intent, or at least, that they would sideline the Sisterhood from the film. And while it’s true that there need to be more than just males attached to the creative side of the project, it’s very early to say that there won’t be any.
Brian Herbert and KJA being involved does give me pause.
I have absolutely no hope at all that this will be any good.
There is a reason that publishers initially rejected Dune as being “too intellectual”.
“TV show based on authorised fanfiction from authors with a history of lying to the fanbase.”
Hard. Pass.
@6 Werthead
I’m hoping this only has the title in common with the KJA/BH novel, and that it’s just a series focusing on the Bene Gesserit. I’m not a fan of how they handled the Butlerian Jihad.
@5. Beta: an argument could be made that intellectual equals intelligent, which isn’t a bad thing. Or that by the end of the original series, it wasn’t intellectual at all, just space battles and land battles between two large armies of women (BG vs. Honored Matres). In other words, not that different from current spectacle movies and TV.
@6. Werthead: I read the sequels, where just about everybody is re-cloned and they defeat Omnium (OMnius?). Alsdo read a couple of the prequels, which were increasingly diminishing returns.
What’d they lie about?
The Bene Gesserit will play a key role in the movie, because they are key in the books. The author has the audacity to portray the TV series as a demotion for women?
Clearly Frank Herbert did not estimate women in his books. The last 2 books are Bene Gesserit centric. Now, Villenueve is launching a series about them (I can’t wait!)
This lends to the idea that militant femminism doesn’t want equality, but superiority…which isn’t real femminism.
@8: On the release of the first book, they made a huge deal about how they’d found tons of Frank Herbert’s notes and the prequels and sequels were based directly on his material.
When the Butlerian Jihad trilogy finished, they slipped up in an interview and admitted they’d invented Omnius from scratch, which means that he was not the “great enemy” Herbert was building up to revealing in the original novels (which was clearly the Tleilaxu anyway), which in turn unravelled the whole story they were trying to tell.
Further digging suggested that the “extensive notes” amounted to about 1.5 pages of A4 material and the sole thing on it was a musing about bringing back Paul, Chani etc as gholas in “Dune 7”. Everything outside of that was pulled out of their backsides.
They knew if they just presented the books as “authorised fanfic by these two guys” no-one would be interested, so they made a huge deal about how it was all based on Frank Herbert’s notes and therefore canon and real Dune fans should buy it. They lied to make money.
@10. Werthead: the Tleilaxu and their ideas of keeping women comatose, while using them as reproduction “tanks” would perhaps be even more horrifying in today’s climate. I’d say, don’t hold the Matres back; let them go after the little fuckers.
Hold on there goober, how about you give us something watchable (if not entirely enjoyable) before you start playing in that sandbox and make it into a litterbox instead?
Militant feminism, true feminism. Hopefully they will stay true to the out-of-control nature of the bene gesserit and the necessity for the God Emperor to eventually put them down.
@10 Werthead
Remember when they had the now-deceased author of the Dune Encyclopedia co-author a letter with them saying that it was non-canon, even though Herbert had already said that years earlier?
I’d rather have Villaneuve have characters reading verbatim from the Dune Encyclopedia then watch any of the Alia-level abomination dribble authored by those corpse-fuckers Brian and Kevin
I just love the Dune Encyclopedia. But as far as I am concerned Dune ends with God Emperor.
Ah, “Queen Bee: the Movie”. Anyone who doesn’t get the reference should be happy.
I want those people to share my pain.
@16/princessroxana,
What, write off Lampadas ?!
A show centered around women, may not be femi-friendly enough? Really Ms. Asher-Perrin? That’s how you think this series could go wrong.
I concur this show may not prove femi-friendly enough, for Emily’s reasons stated. And Brian and Kevin’s Dune (as opposed to Frank’s) is not a world I want to explore any further, in any form. Hoping Denis’ big-screen version is more true to the original.
@19, somehow I’ve survived. Anyway the Dune Encyclopedia’s version of BG HQ is better. And I HATE the Honored Matres. I can’t decide if they’re a male fantasy or nightmare.
@22,
A dream to some. A nightmare to others! :)
Ah, I see the right-wing trolls have infected this place now. Wonderful.
I’m with @2 on both counts. This sounds like it’ll be adapting the dreck BH/KJA drooled out. Hard pass.
Right wing trolls? Where?
Why is Dune so haunted by terrible adaptations? It borders on farcical how many people tried to adapt the story to the screen and failed so miserably..
Remember these guys?
When a David Lynch movie is the best foot forward you know you need to try harder.
IIRC, it was Jo Walton who described the Dune books as “homeopathically bad”. I can only imagine how bad the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson ones get.
@24, @25, I’m not sure if “right wing troll” is the right term, but this certainly brings out strong emotions.
@22, @23, for a fantasy the HM are a little too destructive. Many males (adolescent and beyond) dream of sex without having to go through courtship rituals and negotiation. Most also dream of being able to walk away from it afterwards, still in control of their own mind. Note how in Frank Herbert’s books Murbella’s powers got checked by making her mutually dependent on Duncan.
Now would be a good time for a reminder of our commenting guidelines–keep your comments civil, constructive, and on-topic, and avoid personally-directed arguments and attacks.
@26
The Sci-fi channel’s Dune and Children of Dune mini-series’s were pretty well done. If they’d had the budget for Lynch’s costuming, which really caught the decadence well, they would be as close to definitive adaptations as you could get.
And I really wish the Dune re-read had gone beyond Children.
I realize Tor makes enough money on those things to publish other things the editors may be willing to take a chance on or just want to get into print, sales be damned, but you don’t have to shove that in our faces.
Personally I quite liked the SF channel’s Dune. Except for the hats. I admit a bare chested James MacAvoy may have influenced me.
Not sure I can even wrap my mind around the question of how realistic the Honored Matres might have been. But I do think that once you have BG employing seduction to capture genes ( re Feyd Rautha) then its a logical development to see just how far that can go. They make good enemies, and I thought Odrade’s “Plan B” solution to counter them was wonderful, at least from a storytelling point of view.
(Taking a mild amount of care to avoid spoilers here, although I’m not sure it’s necessary on this thread.)
@32 — Yes, a fine adaptation aside from the part where they apparently made headwear out of bathroom wall light sconces from Menard’s.
@30 – Wiredog: Agreed, they were pretty faithful to the plot, despite the low budget.
I liked how they developed Irulan’s character.
And adult Alia was absolutely lovely.
Also, at least it wasn’t the batshit crazy Dune that Jodorowsky envisioned.
@33, characters in-universe seem to see the Honored Matres as an exaggeration of the Bene Gesserit, but are they? The BG tradition is to embed themselves in the existing power structure, manipulating things to promote their genetic agenda. Their own planets, warships, and armies are not the BG way. If the BG want a man, they want his genes, and they’ll make it no more unpleasant than necessary.
For the HM, on the other hand, domination seems to be the goal and not the means. Or is that because we don’t see enough of them, canonically?
First off, the suggestion is that this series is meant to cover Bene Gesserit machinations set during and around the events of Dune itself, which would indicate that the film(s) is not planning on focusing on them to the same extent.
This seems… pretty obvious. Yes, if you have a film of Dune, and then a series that is specifically about the Bene Gesserit during the events of Dune, the series will have more Bene Gesserit in it than the film.
Not only does this seem like a mistake from a narrative perspective, given the importance of their actions within the central story, but it also smacks of believing that the stories of women and female characters are not interesting or wide-reaching enough to give them a place on the big screen. They are being pushed to television instead.
This doesn’t seem obvious. You’re assuming that all the BG stuff – in fact, all the female characters – will be cut out of the film and moved to the series. 1) there’s no actual evidence this is going to happen 2) Dune without female characters wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“The series focuses on the female characters” is not the same as “the film will ignore or sideline the female characters”.
This is zero-sum thinking.
@39 Yet I can see execs saying “the TV show is going to focus on this, why put it in the movie?”
@25 – there’s been an influx of comments this week across multiple posts, all of which have been some variation on the general theme of “stop whining so much about representation, nobody wants to hear about your LGBTQ identity, femminnists are stoopid, leave politics out of it” type nonsense.
Yet I can see execs saying “the TV show is going to focus on this, why put it in the movie?”
Well, if they do that, that would be bad for all sorts of reasons, and then we can condemn it. My guess is they won’t because, as I say, if you cut the women out of Dune it won’t make much sense, and they’ll want the movie to stand alone.
Incidentally, why is it the Bene Gesserit? They’re all women. Shouldn’t it be the Binti Gesserit?
@Ajay: you may be confusing “bin” with “bene.” Bene just means “good.” It’s a mirror of Honored Matres, or the Matres are a mirror of the Gesserit.
“Gesserit” itself derives from the Latin for “behavior.” So imagine an order of nuns basically saying, “You’d best be on Good Behavior.”
@39, that was what I was getting at….and if you knew anything about the film adaptations there are numerous ways this could go wrong. What other scifi franchises are learning is the true fan bases acceptance is more important than whether the ubiquitous feme fatale is getting enough face time.
@27, to be homeopathically bad, wouldn’t Dune need a lot more water?
you may be confusing “bin” with “bene.” Bene just means “good.” It’s a mirror of Honored Matres, or the Matres are a mirror of the Gesserit.
“Gesserit” itself derives from the Latin for “behavior.” So imagine an order of nuns basically saying, “You’d best be on Good Behavior.”
That is some interesting etymology right there. The Latin for “behaviour” in this sense is “mores” in the sense of “good manners” or “facta” in the sense of “things that you do”. It isn’t “Gesserit” or anything like it.
“Bene” isn’t the Latin for “good” either. That would be “bonus”.
And “Bene” is a very common prefix for tribal names in Arabic – it’s the plural of “bin” and is also romanised as Bani or Banu, meaning “sons of”, often in a figurative sense (Bani Israel – the children of Israel, the Jews; Bani Quraysh – the sons of Quraysh). Herbert uses it also as a synonym for Tleilaxu, the “Bene Tleilax”. So “Bene Gesserit” should be the Sons of the Islands, “Jesserit” (as in Al Jazeera). But they’re all women. So it should really be Binti Gesserit, the Daughters of the Island.
@47. ajay: “bene” isn’t “good” in Latin? As in “benedictus?”
Here’s a reference:
bene gesserit
and some discussion:
what does bene mean
It’s interesting that you cross-reference with (possible) cognates in other languages, and I suppose the name/term can have multiple meanings, but the Latin is primary.
@47/ajay: “Bonus” is the adjective and “bene” the adverb, like “good” and “well” in English.
The Butlerian Jihad books were basically trashy fan-fiction for me. I didn’t really like them but I couldn’t look away. I still see the phrase “independent robot Erasmus” in my dreams. So it was with great trepidation that I read the sequels by Brian/KJA. I was pleasantly surprised by Hunters, but groaned my way through Sandworms.
I hope this series ignores the BG’s Butlerian origin story.