Prophecy’ Creates a Conversation With Denis Villeneuve’s Movies

[This story contains some spoilers from the first two episodes of Dune: Prophecy.]

Dune: Prophecy took a winding path to the small screen, but showrunner Alison Schapker was more than ready to take the reins of HBO’s latest spinoff of a beloved Warner Bros.’ film franchise.

The six-episode series about the origin of the mysterious Bene Gesserit changed creative leadership a few different times until Schapker and Diane Ademu-John became co-creators and co-showrunners. When production began in late 2022, Schapker then took on the role of sole showrunner through its delivery to the network. It was familiar territory for the scribe, having most recently served as an executive producer on Westworld season four and showrunner on Altered Carbon season two. Overall, her sci-fi credentials were fine-tuned across two decades for various Bad Robot shows including Alias, Lost, Fringe, Almost Human and the aforementioned Westworld. She even had the bittersweet task of writing out the fan-favorite character of Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) on Lost season three.

“I’m really glad I didn’t get to do Dune any sooner. It is such an ambitious piece of material to engage with, and it’s so beloved by so many people. So it was wonderful to come to Dune later on in my career, and my experience certainly helped,” Schapker tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Schapker and co. took their cues from Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-winning Dune: Part One and the soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated Part Two, creating a visual and auditory experience that feels like a worthy extension of the filmic universe. Schapker commends Dune: Prophecy’s department heads and craftspeople for pulling off such a tall order given that they had to work on a TV budget and schedule.

Villeneuve was briefly involved in the series during its very early days, but he then had to refocus on the development of Dune: Part Two, as well as Dune: Messiah. Still, he offered Schapker his blessing in a key way. (Villeneuve’s longtime collaborator, Pierre Gill, also led the cinematography department as the DP for half of season one.)

“When we go to Arrakis, the sandworms have a similar design, so Denis was kind enough to bless that overlap,” Schapker shares. “But we also wanted to go to our own corners of the Dune universe, and that’s why we explicitly did not set the majority of our action on Arrakis.”

Instead, the series spends a good portion of its runtime on the planet of Wallach IX where the Bene Gesserit’s — or the Sisterhood as they’re currently titled — headquarters and school were founded. The series primarily takes place 10,148 years before the birth of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), exploring the ancestry of his Harkonnen mother — and Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother — Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). That lineage is twofold as the beginnings of the Bene Gesserit were truly established by Harkonnen sisters, Valya and Tula. (Emily Watson/Jessica Barden and Olivia Williams/Emma Canning share the roles of Valya and Tula in timelines that are 30 years apart.) 

“We’re exploring [the future Bene Gesserit] through the lens of these Harkonnen characters, who, 10,000 years in the future, are nothing but monstrous villains,” Schapker explains. “So where did that family come from and what’s their story? In this case, it’s a tragic story, and it contains the seeds of where the Harkonnen family is going to eventually go.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Schapker also discusses how the end of the Great Machine Wars 116 years earlier informs the fraught world of Dune: Prophecy’s dual timeline. 

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To start at the beginning of your career, you cut your teeth on Charmed. Did that experience come in handy at all once you went to work on Frank Herbert’s brand of witch?

Well, I don’t really think of the Bene Gesserit as witches in the same way that I do the Charmed witches, but genre work is all about trying to marry the more fantastical genre elements to character stories. God, Charmed was 20 years ago now, but it was a great place to start. It had 22-episode seasons, a fan base and stability, which is hard to find these days. So I was happy to get my foot in the door. 

From there, Monica Owusu-Breen, who was my writing partner at the time, and I went on to do Alias. We moved over to Bad Robot, and that was really fun. So, as I moved up through the ranks and dug more and more into the crafts of writing and filmmaking, all the shows that I worked on came into play by the time I hit Dune: Prophecy.

Yeah, you went in and out of Bad Robot for many years: Alias, Lost, Fringe, Almost Human and Westworld. Did Bad Robot basically hone your sci-fi chops?

Yes, absolutely. I’m really glad I didn’t get to do Dune any sooner. It is such an ambitious piece of material to engage with, and it’s so beloved by so many people. So it was wonderful to come to Dune later on in my career, and my experience certainly helped.

Bad Robot projects love to deploy flashbacks, so did those experiences also inform Dune: Prophecy’s own flashback narrative? 

It’s so true now that you mention it. I definitely love being on a show that doesn’t have to have a formulaic form every week and can allow itself to delve into different points in a character’s life. For Dune: Prophecy, the hallmark is that it takes place over longer periods of time. The goal was to really understand how the past is alive in the present, and that really lent itself to telling a story about both our main characters’ pasts and how the institution of the Sisterhood came to be. So, by juxtaposing two different time periods, it helped us get at those questions. 

“The Cost of Living,” the episode of Lost that you co-wrote, was a great episode, but I remember being so frustrated to lose such a beloved character in Mr. Eko. There were greater plans for him, but Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was homesick to the point of asking off the show. Knowing that you had to write out a fan favorite, was that a bittersweet assignment? 

Absolutely. We loved Mr. Eko. We thought he was a fantastic character, and it’s always hard to do that. All television storytelling is collaborative. You take direction, and [co-showrunners] Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse] had clear ideas of what they wanted to do in that episode. So we just tried to realize it as best we could, but we were definitely sad to see Mr. Eko go.

On a similar note, I thought Westworld season four was the finest season of the series. And knowing that a series is so close to its planned end of five seasons, I’ll never understand why these companies opt to have all these unfinished stories on their platforms. You’d think there’s more long-term value in a completed story than one that is 80 percent finished.

(Schapker nods in agreement)

Was that a frustrating turn of events? 

Speaking as a fan, that hurt. I love Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy’s storytelling, and they really have a vision for that show, so I really wanted them to end it in the way that they wanted to end it. It’s a story that gets richer with time. It’s a story about the rise of artificial intelligence, and with every year that goes by, we, as a culture, are becoming more and more familiar with the stakes of all that. So the show was actually out ahead in terms of the questions that it was exploring, and it will only get more pertinent. But I still have a fantasy that, somewhere, somehow, Westworld will find its way to finish itself.

Yeah, Jonah and Lisa still talk about it as if they’ll finish it someday.

I get excited every time I read that! I really do. I wish it tremendously well. 

Westworld’s cancellation did open the door for you and Dune: Prophecy, which had an eventful development process from the looks of it. What can you say about the course of events that landed you in the showrunner position?  

Coming off Westworld and finding out that there was an opportunity to join Dune, they very much knew when I came aboard that they were telling the origin story of the Bene Gesserit. Right from the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson novel Sisterhood of Dune, it’s baked in that the second Mother Superior of the Sisterhood is a Harkonnen, Valya Harkonnen. Her sister [and Reverend Mother], Tula Harkonnen, is right behind her. So, at the heart of this all-female institution, you have these very overdetermined sisters within the Sisterhood, and they’re Harkonnens. And that, as a premise, was very strong. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to know more about the Bene Gesserit, myself included. So we’re exploring it through the lens of these Harkonnen characters, who, 10,000 years in the future, are nothing but monstrous villains. So where did that family come from and what’s their story? In this case, it’s a tragic story, and it contains the seeds of where the Harkonnen family is going to eventually go. So that was on the table, and I was privileged to have an overlap with [former co-showrunner] Diane Ademu-John. I then took over at some point, and for the past two years, I have been seeing it through production and post.

So the series is based on the original Dune novel and the aforementioned Sisterhood of Dune, but did you pull from the entire Greats Schools of Dune prequel trilogy that includes the latter? 

Yes, those books were definitely an inspiration for us, and the past timeline of our show is tethered to events in the Schools trilogy.

And how much whole-cloth invention did you have to do?

We did work in conjunction with the Herbert estate, and it was nice to explore Valya as a young woman who’s coming into power as the second Mother Superior at this very fragile time in the books. But what happened once she solidified her position? So that’s where we got to tell some of our own story that’s very much inspired by the books and tethered to the books. In the world of the television show that we were setting up, we wanted to see a more mature Valya. We wanted to understand what lengths she would go to control and grow the Sisterhood, but also what would happen once her power is tested and under threat.

I could tell within seconds that you went to great lengths to honor Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies because you used the same on-screen futura font that he uses in most of his films, not just his Dune movies. 

Yes! (Laughs)

Was respecting his work a top priority regardless of his involvement? 

Yeah, and Legendary is still very much involved in both. We were absolutely inspired by the films, and we wanted our world to feel like it was in conversation. For example, when we go to Arrakis, the sandworms have a similar design, so Denis was kind enough to bless that overlap. But we also wanted to go to our own corners of the Dune universe, and that’s why we explicitly did not set the majority of our action on Arrakis. We wanted to explore some planets that people were not as familiar with, and do some world building that would hold up in the greater universe. So, yes, we wanted to be in the universe of Denis’ films, while also trying to do our own thing.

Was Denis just too busy developing his Dune trilogy?

By the time I came on, Denis had reengaged on the film side of things. That was where he was going to be putting his creative energy. So we did not create in lockstep, and being 10,000 years apart really lends itself to that. But he’s a Dune fan, and I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with him, so I hope that he will be delighted by this corner of the universe and time period.

I thought your team did an admirable job maintaining the movies’ production value. Dune won several Oscars for its craft, and Dune: Part Two likely will too, so that’s a tough act to follow.

Oh my god, I know. Especially on a TV budget and a TV schedule.

I actually spoke to The Penguin director Craig Zobel about this same subject since he had to maintain The Batman’s visual continuity on the small screen. Did you receive any tech specs from the films’ department heads? Was there any kind of handoff? 

Well, our DP, Pierre Gill, shot [additional photography] on Dune. He’s a friend of Denis’, so he was very familiar with what it would take to put our show in the same universe. All our department heads had great respect for what the films had done, while also finding a way to earn their place in the universe through their own world building. The craftspeople and department heads on our show were the best that I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and everyone worked from a place of real respect for the source material and the films.

The Sisterhood is not the Bene Gesserit quite yet. They seem like they haven’t fully settled on their identity as they’re torn between two different methodologies going forward. 

They’re a young institution at a time where society is literally coming out of the shadow of this interstellar war. It set humanity back, and, as it says in the books, humans came to the brink of extinction. So they’re afraid of this technology and artificial intelligence that turned into their machine oppressors. They’ve now banned thinking machine technology, but that’s left them with all these gaps. So human beings are pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human in an attempt to try and fill those gaps. And the Sisterhood is one example. They have what looks like superpowers to us in 2024, and 10,000 years from now in the Dune lore, these people exert tremendous mind-body control through these superhuman abilities. And it’s grounded. Things like truth-sense or the Voice are all attainable, but at great risk. 

So I think of [our series’ main timeline] as a time of great rebuilding and imagination, but it is also a time of great danger. There’s a lot of fear that people are going to backslide, and the Sisterhood shares that fear. So they’re trying to guide humanity on a path where they don’t slip into war and tyranny and self-destruction. That’s a worthy and noble goal, but they’re also individuals whose relationships to that goal are going to be different depending on who’s in charge.

The Dune movies position the Harkonnens as the clear evil, but it seems like your show makes a point to show that the Harkonnen-Atreides blood feud isn’t as cut and dry as one might think. 

That’s right.

Is it all just a matter of perspective? 

Yeah, and the truth is always contested. We’re not always getting a transparent telling of the past, and I think you’re right. In the films, the Atreides are very much positioned as the noble good guys, and the Harkonnens are the monstrous evil family. That’s an apt case to make in the films, but how did they get that way? Valya Harkonnen comes right out and says that, in her mind, the written history was based on a lie. That lie then cost her family their noble status, banishing them to a backwater planet. It was all based on an event that was mischaracterized. One of their ancestors who did something noble was characterized as doing something cowardly, and so they all lost their status. But how reliable is Valya as a narrator? That’s something we all need to consider. At the same time, her rage and her ambition come from this feeling that she was robbed of something that was rightfully hers.

Rossak poison is what the Sisterhood used before the Water of Life, which was heavily utilized in Dune: Part Two. Did the book lead you to this embryonic form, or was there pressure to give casual fans of the movies some recognizable elements?

It was all in the books. I’m as interested as anybody in where the Bene Gesserit got this idea that they can commune with the wisdom of their female ancestors. So that all goes back to the Rossak poison and the Water of Life that you later see in the movies. And where did the Voice come from? That, too, is in the books, and it was something that we really enjoyed bringing to life out of a specific circumstance. The sisterhood has this motto: “Crisis. Survival Advancement,” and what crisis gives rise to is that you can take a moment, like a near death experience, and unlock a new skill. So all of that stuff is in the books, and we were mining our source material. 

Of course, we were mindful that there are things that the fans of the films might enjoy learning more about, but we also really tried to thread the needle so that someone could start with the TV show, as well. That was a conscious choice. HBO and all of us wanted that. We wanted Dune: Prophecy to be rich enough for people who care about Dune and know about Dune, but open enough that it could be a starting point.

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Dune: Prophecy releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO/Max, streaming on Max.