Despite being acknowledged to be one of, if not the greatest sci-fi novel of all time, Frank Herbert's 1965 book Dune has found little success in Hollywood yet. Its story is often considered to be unfilmable due to the dense plot and dialog structure of the novel. In an interview with Inverse, Herbert's son Brian Herbert revealed he has visited the sets of filmmaker Denis Villeneuve's upcoming adaptation of Dune, and he is very happy with what he saw.

"I was very impressed by the trailer, and I was thrilled to actually be on the movie set in Budapest last year, where my wife and I watched the filming of several scenes. This is a really big movie, a major project that will forever be considered THE definitive film adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic novel. Fans are going to love this movie. Denis Villeneuve is the perfect director to do Dune."

Dune tells the story of a distant civilization that has advanced enough to spread out through the entire galaxy. At the center of the civilization is a special drug known as "the spice Melange". The spice grants its users many special abilities that make everything from faster-than-light travel to supernatural prescience possible.

Unfortunately, the spice can only be cultivated on the brutal desert planet Arrakis. The stewardship of the planet is granted to Duke Leto Atreides. But this turns out to be merely a ploy to get rid of the Duke's family. It then falls to Leto's son Paul, the chosen figure of destiny, to take back control of Arrakis from the villainous Baron Harkonnen and his co-conspirators.

While Dune's influence on sci-fi has been profound (the novel was one of the primary influences on the creation of the Star Wars movies), Dune itself has proven very tricky to adapt. But previous failures from other filmmakers did not daunt Villeneuve, who declared in an interview that making a Dune movie was a lifelong dream of his, and why he feels the decades-old story of Arrakis is relevant to this day.

"I would not agree to make this adaptation of the book with one single movie. The world is too complex. It's a world that takes its power in details. No matter what you believe, Earth is changing, and we will have to adapt. That's why I think that 'Dune', this book, was written in the 20th century. It was a distant portrait of the reality of the oil and the capitalism and the exploitation, the overexploitation, of Earth. Today, things are just worse. It's a coming-of-age story, but also a call for action for the youth."

Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script he co-wrote with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts, Dune features Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Zendaya as Chani, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides, Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, Chang Chen as Dr. Wellington Yueh, Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Dr. Liet Kynes, Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Dave Bautista Glossu Rabban, David Dastmalchian as Piter De Vries, Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, Stephen Henderson as Thufir Hawat and Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck. The film arrives in theaters on October 1, 2021. This story originated at Inverse.