‘Dune: The Sisterhood’ Casts Indira Varma as Empress Natalya in HBO Max Series
The upcoming HBO Max series Dune: The Sisterhood is gaining some momentum at HBO Max.
Deadline is reporting that Game of Thrones and Obi-Wan Kenobi alum Indira Varma has been cast as Empress Natalya in the show. She is the third actress to join the project after it was announced recently that Emily Watson and Shirley Henderson would be playing the Harkonnen Sisters, the two leading roles. According to the report, Varma’s character is described as “a formidable royal who united thousands of worlds in her marriage to Emperor Corrino.”
The storyline will be adapted from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s novel Sisterhood of Dune, and set 10,000 years before Paul Atreides. It will follow the Harkonnen Sisters as they fight for the destiny of humankind and establish the mysterious organization known as the Bene Gesserit.
Varma will next be seen in the Apple TV+ anthology series Extrapolations, with Edward Norton and Michael Gandolfini among many others, and next year’s Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning — Part 1. She was highly praised for her work in both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Game of Thrones, and seems to fit perfectly within the Dune universe.
Earlier this year, we found out that Chernobyl‘s Johan Renck would be directing the first two episodes and serving as executive producer on the series. Dune director Denis Villeneuve was at one point going to direct the pilot. Diane Ademu-John (The Haunting of Bly Manor) has taken over as main writer and showrunner from Dune co-writer Jon Spaihts, as both him and Villeneuve were required to quickly prep Dune: Part II for a late 2023 release. They will, however, remain as executive producers on the project.
In other Dune-related news, Warner Bros. Discovery recently moved up two weeks the release date of Part II, which is currently in production in Budapest. The film will now open on November 3, 2023. Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, and Stephen McKinley Henderson are all returning. The sequel will also include Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha, Christopher Walken as the Emperor of the Known Universe, Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot, and Souheila Yacoub.
There is no known production schedule for Dune: The Sisterhood, though with casting moving full-steam ahead, cameras could potentially start rolling before the end of the year, and the series could drop on HBO Max around the same time as Part II hits theaters next year. We will keep you posted with new updates as they come out.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
