By At the moment there isn’t much demanding our attention on WB’s not-yet-named streaming service, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come. The biggest volley so far? The announcement that Denis Villenueve will be directing the pilot for a female-focused TV series based on the Bene Gesserit, a mysterious order of women from Dune. You may recall that Villenueve is directing the big screen adaptation as well, and Legendary wants to turn the classic science fiction book into a multimedia empire with an entire cinematic universe, games, comics, and anything else they can make money off of.
This particular series will focus on how the Bene Gesserit weave in and out of the political life of The Imperium as they plot for their own future and, of course, it all leads them to Arrakis, better known as the planet Dune. As someone who has an incrediblely limited knowledge of the series that’s solely based on David Lynch’s 1984 movie adaptation I have no idea what any of that really means, but it sounds like it could be fun. Obviously, the universe of Dune has a lot to unpack and dive into so expanding into streaming TV seems like a good idea.
Getting Villeneuve to do all this is genius. He might be one of the best science fiction directors working, and it’s hard to imagine the franchise is better hands than his. He’s adept at using science fiction to address bigger ideas, and Dune is a series that’s all about doing just that.
