Game of Thrones linguist David Peterson creating language for Dune movie

David Peterson, the man responsible for creating the Dothraki and Valyrian languages on Game of Thrones, has been drafted to create languages on director Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune movie. Speaking to io9, Peterson confirmed he was already in the middle of creating languages for the film.

"I asked [the studio before the interview], especially because it seemed like every day you’re jumping on Twitter and, ‘Oh this person is working on Dune.’ I’m like, ‘Can I say I’m working on Dune?’ They said, ‘Yeah you can say you’re working on Dune, but you can’t say anything about what you’re doing."

He’s right about there being a new person hopping on board the movie every day; this thing is chock-a-block with stars. Josh Brolin (Thanos from Avengers) is particularly psyched, or whatever this Instagram post means:

Even though there are several unique languages mentioned in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, they are all presented in English. There’s Galach, which is used by the inhabitants of Arrakis, aka Dune. There’s Chakobsa, a hunting language used by the Fremen. There’s Azhar, a secret language that incorporates hand gestures and a sort of sign language used only by the all-female Bene Gesserit order. Legendary is planning to make several Dune movies, so Peterson should have his hands full for a while.

Peterson also discussed Game of Thrones season 8; Peterson wouldn’t reveal much of what he did for that, either. Security was tight. “This season I didn’t get partial scripts, and I would’ve been very insulted by that but it turns out the same was true of the actors,” Peterson said. “I only got the specific lines that I needed to translate and maybe like a very, very minimal bit of context to set up the scene.”

"When you entered and left the actual set you had to go through a security gate where you put stickers on the cameras on your phone, so you couldn’t even accidentally record anything."

Peterson says that he “may have been approached” to work on HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones prequel series, which is set thousands of years before the events of the main show. In fact, he already created a language for the Children of the Forest that was supposed to be used in season 6, but it didn’t make it in the final cut.

Peterson also looked back at his time on Thrones and described what it’s meant to him to work on a genre-defining series:

"It’s been 10 years, 10 years of my life, and honestly, it’s changed the course of my life. That was the first show I ever worked on, and since then I’ve worked on 20 more and have been contacted on about 50 more than that. It was interesting seeing it evolve from, ‘Oh, this is a neat show based on a fantasy property we really like’ to ‘This is a genre and era-defining show.’ It’s been interesting seeing that behind the scenes.”"

Dune is currently in production and is set to hit theaters in November of 2020. Game of Thrones season 8 premieres this Sunday, April 14.

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