If there’s one thing that the folks behind Dune: Prophecy want, it’s for the audience to feel welcome. Notorious for a perception of denseness and complexity, the barrier to entry into Dune has, historically, felt like a fictional world that required a bunch of homework ahead of time. But in a TV age in which other prestige fantasy shows are derived from the appendices of famous novels, Dune: Prophecy’s advantage is that although it's based on whole books, it's not entirely beholden to fan expectations, nor does it assume you’ve read everything. It’s a prequel, but it’s equally its own thing.
“For us, it’s impossible to approach it like that,” Chris Mason tells Inverse. His sword-swinging character is Keiran Atreides, a distant ancestor of Leto and Paul. “They become part of that Dune canon, which has been really exciting. But, for us it's new and it's something we are very much in the present with our characters.”
