I just saw this trailer for Dune Prophecy, coming to HBO Max.
Trailer Here
Looks like it’s set about 10K years before the events of the book Dune. Origin story for the Bene Gesserit it seems.
Most of my exposure to any storylines prior to the Dune book is the (IMHO) awful prequel work by his son. I stopped reading them after the first few because they just got so bad. Does anyone know if HBO Max’s Dune Prophecy is based upon any of his son’s work? Or is this a whole new story? If it’s based on his son’s work I’ll likely skip it entirely and not order HBO Max.
It doesn’t appear so, or at least, it’s not from the era of the “founding” of the BG, perhaps it’s during a rise to power. In the Prequels, the BG arise out of a semi-literal group of “Sorceresses” on a jungle planet, who were obsessed for building future generations of ever more powerful psychic power. That grew over decades due to (huge amount of material redacted) a partnership with the proto-Guild/Guild bank, the development of the Holtzman FTL engines and work-arounds, and the war against the Thinking Machines. Development of Arrakis was only just beginning in this period.
So likely it’s a new story set much earlier than the the Dune House books as an example, or a new timeline/revision. I’d guess the former. There are thousands of years of history since the end of the Butlerian Jihad and the House books (which are a full generation before the original novels/movie).
It’s technically based on Sisterhood of Dune, but who knows how closely they’ll follow the actual book.