'Dune' Director Is Making a TV Show About the Bene Gesserit (aka the Original Jedi)
Dune: The Sisterhood is a new TV series that will act as a companion piece to 2020's Dune.
The show's pilot will be directed by Denis Villeneuve, the director of next year's Dune.
The show will release on WarnerMedia's yet-to-be-released streaming service, though no premiere date has yet been announced.
It's no secret that Star Wars is actually a complex tapestry of influences. Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress essentially created R2-D2 and C-3P0, and we can thank 1950s adventure serials, like Flash Gordon, for the iconic title crawl. But perhaps no work influenced Star Wars more than Dune, and now Denis Villeneuve, the director responsible for bringing Frank Herbert's masterwork to the big screen, is exploring one of Star Wars' more direct influences: the Bene Gesserit.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Villeneuve will write and direct the first episode of a new series called Dune: The Sisterhood, which will explore the secret, matriarchal order of the Bene Gesserit.
"The Bene Gesserit have always been fascinating to me," Villeneuve said. "Focusing a series around that powerful order of women seemed not only relevant and inspiring but a dynamic setting for the television series."
For the uninitiated, the Bene Gesserit are a secret order in the Dune universe that subtly (and sometimes overtly) manipulate events to their own ends. In the novel, the main protagonist's mother, Lady Jessica, belongs to this order, and her son Paul Atreides is also entangled within the order's machinations.
The Bene Gesserit has long been linked to George Lucas's own Jedi Order. While Lucas hasn't publicly admitted the extent of Dune's influences on Star Wars, Herbert famously mentioned that when he saw Star Wars, he could make at least "37 points of direct comparison" between the two, and this was likely one of them.
Here are just a few "points" to consider between the Bene Gesserit and the Jedi:
In Star Wars, Obi-Wan famously uses a Jedi Mind Trick to trick Stormtroopers into thinking that these "are not the droids you're looking for." In Dune, the Bene Gesserit can use The Voice to control others, though it doesn't work on everyone (just like the Jedi Mind Trick).
In Star Wars, the Jedi's training philosophy is called the Jedi Bendu. In Dune, the Bene Gesserit's is called Prana Bindu.
Both names, Gesserit and Jedi, were used to invoke comparison of the Jesuits, a real religious order not unlike the sci-fi creations inspired by them.
Of course, differences exist (Bene Gesserit are more background players than lightsaber-wielding superheroes), but it's hard to deny how similar the two really are, and now, the Bene Gesserit will finally get the spotlight.
The show will debut on WarnerMedia's streaming site, which will launch in beta in "late 2019." There's no word yet exactly when we can expect The Sisterhood to find its way online, but it'll likely prime the pump for Villeneuve's first Dune film due in theaters November 2020.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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