We may be spending a lot more time on Arrakis in the coming years. According to a rumor circulating the internet, Warner Bros. Discovery is considering more Dune movies and television shows to keep viewers hooked on the spice.
2024 was a big year for Dune, the sweeping science fiction franchise birthed by author Frank Herbert. On the movie front, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. released Dune: Part Two, where visionary director Denis Villeneuve adapted the second half of Herbert's seminal 1965 novel for the big screen. On television, we got Dune: Prophecy, an HBO/Max spinoff prequel series set 10,000 years before the movies which depicted the rise of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.
Both of these iterations of Dune were massively successful, enough that Warner Bros. is powering full steam ahead on more. Villeneuve is hard at work on a third Dune movie, which will adapt Herbert's book Dune Messiah; meanwhile, Dune: Prophecy has been renewed for a second season on HBO and Max. However, according to entertainment industry sleuth Daniel RPK, WBD is looking even farther ahead.
"I hear that Legendary/WB already have plans for more Dune. Including a second show and a 4th film," RPK wrote in a recent update. He didn't go into further detail, so for now we have to take this all with a grain of salt. But considering the success of Dune projects in the past year, it seems pretty logical that the studios would be raring for more.
Director Denis Villeneuve likely won't return for Dune 4
So what does this mean for Dune? Let's start with the movies. Denis Villeneuve has been adamant for some time that he's only making three films in the series, which will cover the events of Herbert's books Dune and Dune Messiah. These two novels tell a fairly conclusive tale for the series' original protagonist Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet in the films. From where I'm sitting, it makes a lot of sense that Villeneuve would want to cap his run of Dune movies there.
"Listen, if Dune Messiah happens, it will have been many years for me on Arrakis, and I would love to do something else," the director told Vanity Fair in late 2024. "I think that it would be a good idea for me to make sure that, in Messiah, there are the seeds in the project if someone wants to do something else afterwards, because they are beautiful books. They are more difficult to adapt. They become more and more esoteric. It's a bit more tricky to adapt, but I'm not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else."
When Villeneuve says the Dune books get "more esoteric," he isn't joking. One of them, God Emperor of Dune, features a giant sandworm-god-guy who spends a sizable chunk of pages pondering the nature of life, the universe, and everything. It's the sort of stuff that's great in a mind-bending science fiction novel, but might be hard to bring to general audiences in theaters.
Villeneuve also explained that Dune Messiah will feel very different than his first two Dune movies — and that even though the media and many fans have taken to calling it a "trilogy," he really doesn't think of his Dune films that way. "[I]t's important that people understand that for me, it was really a diptych. It was really a pair of movies that will be the adaptation of the first book," Villeneuve said of Dune parts one and two. "That's done and that's finished. If I do a third one, which is in the writing process, it's not like a trilogy. It's strange to say that, but if I go back there, it’s to do something that feels different and has its own identity."
So, Villeneuve has a clear vision for what he wants to do for Dune: Part Three, or Dune Messiah, or whatever Warner Bros. and Legendary decide to call it. After that, he's done — but he is laying groundwork so that someone else could pick up the franchise after him, which explains why the studio would be considering a fourth Dune. Herbert wrote six Dune books in total; after that, his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson co-authored nearly two dozen more. There's plenty of source material to work with.
If Dune 4 does end up getting made, it would likely adapt Children of Dune, the third book written by Herbert. This is a direct sequel to Dune Messiah, and follows Paul Atreides' twin children Leto II and Ghanima. But Denis Villeneuve won't direct. Considering how distinctive the director's stamp is, it's good that Warner Bros. and Legendary might be getting an early start on figuring out how to replace him for an eventual fourth movie.
What would the next Dune TV show be after Dune: Prophecy?
That brings us to television shows. Dune: Prophecy has already been renewed, so we know for a fact we're getting a second season. But the idea that Warner Bros. is pondering more Dune shows makes me more nervous than the idea of them pondering more movies, largely because the roadmap is much less clear.
Unlike Villeneuve's Dune movies, which are adapting Frank Herbert's original novels, Dune: Prophecy has its roots in one of the books written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. It's basically a sequel to the book Sisterhood of Dune, which depicts the original formation of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. Valya Harkonnen is a child in that book; in Dune: Prophecy, she's an adult in charge of the Bene Gesserit, something we don't really see in the novels.
Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert's Dune books are interesting in that the majority of them are expansions of the Dune mythos, rather than direct sequels which continue Frank Herbert's original narrative. They've written books about the war against thinking machines (The Butlerian Jihad), the rise of various guilds and great houses, the ancient history of humankind's ascension to the stars, and more.
Assuming that HBO and WBD stick to the successor books written by Anderson and Brian Herbert, that would give them a lot of options. The Butlerian Jihad trilogy is widely considered one of the cornerstones of Anderson and Brian Herbert's run of Dune books, but since Dune: Prophecy already deals a little bit with the fallout of the war against thinking machines — and it would require a much larger budget, since it has battles more on the scale of the original Dune — I'm hesitant to bet on it. Your guess for where HBO would go next after Dune: Prophecy is as good as mine.
Regardless, the fact remains that Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO have a wealth of source material to choose from, written over more than 60 years. So long as they treat future Dune projects with the same dedication and reverence as Villeneuve's Dune films and Dune: Prophecy, we could be in for quite a ride.
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