Dune before Part Three: the books, the films and the series
Dune: Part Three opens on 18 December. Sixty years of Dune came before it — six novels, a film that was never made, a film that flopped, two miniseries, two blockbusters and a prequel series. Here is all of it, in order.
The short version
The book that started it
Frank Herbert spent five years researching and writing Dune. It first ran in Analog magazine as two shorter serials, Dune World (1963) and The Prophet of Dune (1965), and the expanded novel was turned down by more than twenty publishers before Chilton Books took it in 1965 — a house best known for car repair manuals. It won the first Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1966 Hugo, and has sold almost twenty million copies.
The setting is twenty thousand years ahead. Humanity has banned every "thinking machine" and built minds and disciplines to replace them, and an empire of feudal Great Houses runs on one substance: the spice melange, found only on the desert planet Arrakis. Herbert drew heavily on the Middle East. The Fremen of Arrakis were modelled on the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, the Mahdi prophecy comes from Islamic eschatology, and much of the vocabulary comes from Arabic and Hebrew.
Herbert's six novels
Dune (1965) was followed by Dune Messiah (1969) and Children of Dune (1976), the first hardcover bestseller science fiction ever had. Parts of both sequels were written before Dune itself was finished. Then came God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985). Herbert died on 11 February 1986, with the story still open.
The books after Frank Herbert
From 1999 his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written the rest, partly from Frank Herbert's notes. Prelude to Dune (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, House Corrino, 1999–2001) leads into the first novel. Legends of Dune (2002–2004) goes back ten thousand years to the Butlerian Jihad, the war against the machines. Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007) finish the original series from a thirty-page outline Frank Herbert left, which he called Dune 7. Since then: Heroes of Dune, the Great Schools of Dune trilogy (2012–2016) and the Caladan Trilogy (2020–2022) — twenty-three books by the pair as of 2024.
If you read only one line of them, read Herbert's six first. The rest fill gaps around them.
The film that was never made
In 1974 Alejandro Jodorowsky set out to film Dune with Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen and Mick Jagger as Feyd-Rautha, with designs by H. R. Giger and Jean Giraud and music approached from Pink Floyd. The script ran so long the film might have lasted fourteen hours. It collapsed for money, and survives as the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky's Dune.
David Lynch's Dune (1984)
The first Dune anyone saw on a screen came from David Lynch, for producer Dino De Laurentiis and Universal. Kyle MacLachlan made his film debut as Paul Atreides, with Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, Sting as Feyd-Rautha and Max von Sydow as Doctor Kynes; Toto wrote the score, with a contribution from Brian Eno. It failed with critics and at the box office, though Herbert was reportedly pleased that it stayed closer to the book than the attempts before it. It has a long afterlife with collectors: Funko's "Dune Classic" figures, launched in 2019, are styled on Lynch's film.
The Sci-Fi Channel miniseries
Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), written and directed by John Harrison, starred Alec Newman as Paul and William Hurt as Duke Leto, and was praised for staying faithful to the novel; it won two Emmys. Its 2003 sequel, Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, adapted Dune Messiah and Children of Dune together. Until Part Three, it is the only screen version of Messiah there is — the place to watch the story before Villeneuve tells it.
Denis Villeneuve's films
Villeneuve's Dune (2021), titled Dune: Part One on screen, covers the first half of the novel, with Timothée Chalamet as Paul, Zendaya as Chani, Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica, Oscar Isaac as Leto and Javier Bardem as Stilgar. It grossed $411 million and won six Academy Awards. Dune: Part Two (2024) finished the novel, took $715 million — the seventh-biggest film of its year — and won two more Oscars from five nominations, including Best Picture.
Dune: Prophecy
HBO's prequel series, which premiered in November 2024, is set ten thousand years before the films and follows two Harkonnen sisters, Valya and Tula, as they build the Sisterhood that becomes the Bene Gesserit. It draws on the Great Schools of Dune novels. A second season was filmed between November 2025 and March 2026 and is due in 2026.
Dune: Part Three
Part Three adapts Dune Messiah. Villeneuve wrote it with Brian K. Vaughan and has said it will be his last Dune film. The story jumps seventeen years, to Paul as Emperor facing the cost of what he started. Robert Pattinson joins as Scytale, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer, Anya Taylor-Joy as Paul's sister Alia, and Jason Momoa returns as Hayt, a ghola made in the image of Duncan Idaho; Florence Pugh is back as Irulan. It was shot from July to November 2025 in Budapest and at Liwa Oasis in Abu Dhabi, mostly on 65mm film with sequences on IMAX 70mm, and Hans Zimmer has scored it again. It opens in IMAX on 18 December in the US, and internationally from 16 December, with Dune Insider screenings on 14 and 15 December.
What to read or watch first
Seen the two films and nothing else? The shortest route to Part Three is the novel it adapts, Dune Messiah — or, if you would rather watch, the 2003 Children of Dune miniseries, which adapts it together with Children of Dune. Want the whole saga? Read Herbert's six in order, then decide how far into the Herbert and Anderson books you want to go. The watch order on this page lists every screen version in release order, so you can tick them off before December.