Sacrifices Must Be Made In The New Dune: Prophecy Teaser Trailer

If "House of the Dragon" season 2 isn't quite enough to scratch your itch for great noble houses, plotting, and backstabbing, then don't worry, backup is on the way! It comes in the form of "Dune: Prophecy." a prequel series set 10,000 years before the events of Frank Herbert's original novel (recently adapted into two movies by director Denis Villeneuve), which tells the origin story of the Bene Gesserit. This sisterhood of space witches uses ancestral memory and preternatural foresight to manipulate power across the galaxy through careful "breeding" of the noble houses. 

The first teaser for "Dune: Prophecy" felt very much like "Game of Thrones ... in Space!" — though that is pretty much the entire premise of the "Dune" franchise (which predates "Game of Thrones" by several decades). Alison Schapker, who has prior experience bringing elaborate sci-fi worlds to life on "Westworld" and "Altered Carbon" serves as showrunner for the series. Emily Watson stars as Valya Harkonnen, an ancestor of the vicious antagonists of "Dune," and Olivia Williams plays her sister, Tula Harkonnen. Here's the official synopsis:

From the expansive universe of Dune, created by acclaimed author Frank Herbert, and 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides, "Dune: Prophecy" follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind and establish the fabled sect that will become known as the Bene Gesserit. "Dune: Prophecy" is inspired by the novel "Sisterhood of Dune," written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

Check out the new teaser trailer for "Dune: Prophecy" above!

Denis Villeneuve wasn't directly involved in the making of "Dune: Prophecy," but the series has clearly taken its aesthetic cues from Villeneuve's films, from the costumes to the architecture to the blue and red glimmer of shields. This somewhat compounds a problem already present in the "Sisterhood of Dune" novel: that virtually nothing has changed in the Imperium's power structure and which families comprise the great houses in 10,000 years. During the same time period in our own history, humans went from domesticating animals for the first time to putting robots on Mars. 

The stalls in technology are down to an event called the Butlerian Jihad, in which "thinking machines" were wiped out (hence the families in "Dune" instead relying on human computers called mentats). Still, the halt in technology doesn't explain why the Bene Gesserit didn't switch up their look over the course of 10,000 years. Perhaps there was a period between "Dune: Prophecy" and "Dune" where they tried wearing purple flares and it just didn't work.

The six-episode season of "Dune: Prophecy" is set to premiere on HBO in November, and will stream on Max. The cast also includes Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, and Mark Strong.