The first Dune: Prophecy trailer takes us back ten millennia before the birth of Paul Atreides, and things look almost the same

With Dune: Part Two in the rear view mirror and everyone looking towards the Dune: Messiah adaptation next, you'd think the franchise would be taking some time away from our screens...and you'd be wrong. Dune: Prophecy is coming to Max this fall.

The series takes place approximately 10,000 years before Paul Atreides was born, which is roughly 10,000 years after our time. The Dune universe's timeline is wild, and mankind has gone through a lot of common sci-fi scenarios, such as the violent crusade against sentient machines (the Butlerian Jihad) and whatnot. Anyway, the main takeaway from this trailer, which you can watch here, is that things looks a bit too similar to what we've been presented with in Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies.

Don't get me wrong, the show looks fine so far, especially for what's essentially an early teaser trailer that still needs a lot of post-production work, but it seems that the creative shakeup that took place last year, with the original showrunner (Diane Ademu-John) being replaced and Chernobyl's Johan Renck departing as the director behind the first few episodes due to creative differences, really brought the long-in-the-works series much closer to the highly successful movies from Warner Bros. and Legendary. We'll get to see many more worlds and different cultures though.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing (we won't know for sure until the show comes out), but it appears that Dune: Prophecy - previously titled The Sisterhood - has sacrificed much of its own voice to adopt some of the iconography of the Dune movies, which has led to the massive chronology gap between the events depicted in different works feeling rather small. The same thing happened with Star Wars' Old Republic era as depicted in the BioWare and Obsidian games, as the key visual elements of both the Jedi and the Sith, among other things, had to be preserved because of brand recognition. I get why it's done time and again, but I'm quite sure there were more refreshing creative visions for such prequels thrown around before those adjustments. In the end, the universes feel smaller and not as dynamic because of this.

TVLine is also reporting the show will only have six episodes, and we don't know if it's been reworked into a limited series either. In any case, I doubt we'll learn more about its future until it's out and audiences give it the thumbs up or down.

Alison Schapker (Westworld) is the solo showrunner, and Anna Foerster (Outlander) has directed at least three episodes. Emily Watson and Olivia Williams (previously Shirley Henderson) star as Valya and Tula Harkonnen respectively. The rest of the packed cast includes Mark Strong as Emperor Javicco Corrino, Travis Fimmel as Desmond Hart, and Jodhi May (previously Indira Varma) as Natalya, among others.