Max’s Dune prequel series casts an exciting Bollywood megastar

Max has announced that Dune Part 2 is coming to the streaming services on May 21, 2024 – we’ve been eagerly awaiting a date for a movie that’s going straight into our best Max movies list. 

And that’s not the only good Dune news – Dune: Prophecy, Max’s prequel series set millennia before the movies, has cast an acting legend in a recurring role, though not one widely known to English-language movie fans. According to Variety, Indian megastar Tabu has been cast as Sister Francesca, described as “strong, intelligent and alluring” and “leaves a lasting impression in her wake. Once a great love of the Emperor, her return to the palace strains the balance of power in the capital.”

Casting Tabu is a really big deal, because she’s on of India’s most revered acting talents, racking up a ton of awards over her career. While she might be less famous in the US and UK, you still might know her from Life of Pi, The Namesake and the BBC’s mini-series A Suitable Boy.

What do we know about Dune: Prophecy?

The show is based on Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson’s book Dune: The Sisterhood, which is set roughly 10,000 years before the events of the first Dune movie. The series would follow two Harkonnen sisters who “combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, and establish the fabled sect that will become known as the Bene Gesserit.” 

It was initially expected to stream in November 2023 to coincide with the launch of Dune: Part Two, but of course that didn’t happen. At the time of writing, a streaming date for the show still hasn’t been announced.

According to Variety, the cast also includes Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmel, Johdi May, Mark Strong, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Josh Heuston, Chloe Lea, Jade Anouka, Faoileann Cunningham, Edward Davis, Aoife Hinds, Chris Mason, and Shalom Brune-Franklin. 

The show has had something of a troubled road to the screen: last year Max announced that both the director Johan Renck and the star Shirley Henderson were no longer attached to the show, and that it would be taking a “pre-scheduled hiatus” to make some creative changes. A few months before, series creator and showrunner Diane Ademu-John also left her role, although she remains an executive producer.

But troubled products can often turn out to be worth of a spot on our list of the best Max shows, and with such interesting material to draw from, and great talent on board, we’ve got high hopes, still.

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Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall (Twitter) has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR.