Dune: Prophecy series faced the pitiless terrain of adapting anything Dune

For over 50 years, American author Frank Herbert's best-selling science-fiction novel Dune was a puzzle no one in show business seemed able to solve.

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Published in 1965, the book had inspired a shelf full of sequels and prequels - along with scores of imitators - yet it defied every attempt to turn it into a blockbuster film or TV series.

In the 1970s, beloved Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky spent two years and millions of dollars developing a movie and never shot a single frame.

America's David Lynch tried next, but the resulting film, released in 1984, was a personal and box-office catastrophe.

The story's vastness and exoticism proved as perilous to storytellers as the fictional planet Arrakis, whose hostile deserts inspired the franchise's name.

When the HBO series Dune: Prophecy was announced in 2019, its prospects seemed just as murky.

Indeed, the production struggled to find its footing. By the premiere on Max on Nov 19, it will have seen four showrunners, three lead directors and high-level cast changes - not to mention a pandemic and two crippling industry strikes.

But then in 2021, French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who was set to direct the pilot, released Part 1 of his two-part adaptation of Dune. Critics were ecstatic, and the film grossed over US$400 million (S$532 million) worldwide.

Suddenly, a Dune franchise looked viable. Villeneuve's team had offered a blueprint for other creators to work from - tonally, aesthetically and narratively. The studios behind the film, Legendary and Warner (which owns HBO), are also behind the series.

Perhaps more important, there was now a huge audience that had never read Herbert's famously dense novels, but had become invested in the story and characters.