Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 is coming to show the disappointing Dune: Prophecy how to successfully turn an iconic sci-fi movie franchise into a prestige TV drama. As a big fan of both Frank Herbert’s books and Denis Villeneuve’s movies, Dune: Prophecy was one of my most highly anticipated shows of 2024. But when it premiered on HBO, it turned out to be one of the biggest let-downs of 2024.
Dune: Prophecy takes place 10,000 years before the birth of Paul Atreides, so it’s disconnected from anything we’re already attached to by an absurd margin. The war against the thinking machines, seen briefly in montage form in the prologue, would’ve made for a much more exciting TV show than what we got.
Dune: Prophecy has been renewed for a second season at HBO, and it’s set to premiere sometime in 2026 after the long-awaited returns of Euphoria, House of the Dragon, and Larry David. But there’s a different streaming spinoff from a beloved sci-fi movie franchise that looks a lot more promising than Dune: Prophecy season 2.
Dune: Prophecy Failed To Live Up To The Denis Villeneuve Movies
With his two-part adaptation of Dune, Villeneuve has done the impossible and filmed the unfilmable. The first volume of Villeneuve’s cinematic adaptation deftly set up the world and the characters that inhabit it, then the second volume stuck the landing with all the oomph that audiences were expecting. When Villeneuve’s Dune-iverse came to the small screen in an HBO drama, I couldn’t have been more thrilled.
But, unlike a lot of recent HBO franchise spinoffs (The Penguin, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), Dune: Prophecy was deeply underwhelming. It fell into the same trap as a lot of recent TV shows: it spells out all the emotional subtext in on-the-nose dialogue. Everyone says how they’re feeling all the time, seemingly to appease viewers who aren’t actually watching the screen, which can also be seen in The Last of Us and House of the Dragon.
In its six-episode run, Dune: Prophecy had one great standalone installment: a Romeo and Juliet-style forbidden love between an Atreides and a Harkonnen. That was a great episode, with clear, personal stakes. But the series as a whole was a massive let-down, especially considering how great the movies were.
I probably won’t even bother tuning in to see Dune: Prophecy season 2 later this year, unless it gets overwhelmingly positive reviews saying it finally lives up to the movies. But there is a different sci-fi spinoff show spun off from a Villeneuve film that I’m eagerly anticipating. It’s been in the works for a while, and it’s almost here: Blade Runner 2099.
Blade Runner 2099 Stands A Better Chance Of Replicating Its Franchise’s Big Screen Success
Like the second season of Dune: Prophecy, Amazon’s Blade Runner TV show — dubbed Blade Runner 2099, in line with the titling system set by Villeneuve’s sequel — is scheduled to premiere sometime in 2026. And, out of the two streaming spinoffs from Villeneuve’s masterpieces coming out this year, Blade Runner 2099 is the most exciting by far.
It has a more interesting premise, it has some really talented names involved, and it has a much more open future timeline than Dune: Prophecy. Ridley Scott, the original director, is attached to Blade Runner 2099 as an executive producer, just like he was on Alien: Earth last year, so it’s in safe hands.
Blade Runner 2099 stars Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh as Olwen, an aging replicant facing the end of her life. This role will give Yeoh plenty of dramatic substance to chew on — sentience, mortality, conflicted emotions — and her co-star is the brilliant, underutilized Hunter Schafer, better known as Jules from Euphoria.
Blade Runner 2099 is set after the movies, so it’s not boxed in by a prequel timeline like Dune: Prophecy. All signs point to this being a much better Villeneuve movie spinoff.
