Acquiring the television rights to Frank Herbert's original six Dune novels, executive producer Richard P. Rubinstein envisioned the complex material adapted in a miniseries format, as he had done previously with Stephen King's The Stand and The Langoliers. He told The New York Times in 2003, "I have found there's a wonderful marriage to be had between long, complicated books and the television mini-series. There are some books that just can't be squeezed into a two-hour movie." Around the same time Rubenstein was first developing the material, the Sci Fi Channel's president, Bonnie Hammer, was spearheading a campaign for the channel to produce "blockbuster miniseries on a regular basis". The Dune miniseries was greenlit in November 1999. Released in 2000, Frank Herbert's Dune was the first of the Sci-Fi Channel's miniseries, followed by Steven Spielberg's Taken in 2002, and Frank Herbert's Children of Dune and Battlestar Galactica in 2003. Rubenstein called his two Dune miniseries "science fiction for people who don't ordinarily like science fiction" and suggested that "the Dune saga tends to appeal to women in part because it features powerful female characters".
Adaptation
Director John Harrison has described his adaptation as a "faithful interpretation" in which any changes he made served to suggest what Herbert had explained subtly or not at all. The miniseries introduces elements not found in Herbert's novel, but according to the director, these serve to elaborate rather than to edit. Hurt was the first to be cast in the 2000 adaptation. A fan of the novel, he told The New York Times, "I was a science fiction junkie... captured Herbert's prophetic reflection of our own age, where nation-states are competing with the new global economy and its corporate elements." Herbert's novel begins with lead character Paul Atreides being 15 years old and aging to 18 over the course of the story. Harrison aged the character to adulthood in order to draw upon an adult acting pool for this crucial role. The miniseries invents an extensive subplot for Princess Irulan, a character who plays little part in the plot of the first novel. Harrison felt the need to expand Irulan's role because she played such an important part in later books, and epigraphs from her later writings opened each chapter of Dune. Additionally, the character gave him a window into House Corrino. Besides the final scene, the only one of Irulan's appearances based on an actual excerpt from the novel is her visit to Feyd-Rautha. However, in the book it is a different Bene Gesserit, Margot Fenring, who visits the Harkonnen heir, on assignment from the Bene Gesserit to "preserve the bloodline" by retrieving his genetic material for their breeding program. The miniseries does not suggest this as Irulan's motive. A director's cut special edition was released on DVD featuring expanded footage and dialogue.
The six-hour Frank Herbert's Dune aired in three parts, starting Sunday, December 3, 2000. The first installment achieved a 4.6 rating with 3 million homes, and the miniseries averaged a 4.4/2.9 million households over all three nights. This doubled all viewership records for Sci Fi, placing Dune among the top ten of basic cable's original miniseries in the five years previous. Two of the three installments also rated among the year's top 10 original cable movies. To date, The 2000 Dune miniseries and its 2003 sequel are two of the three highest-rated programs ever to be broadcast on the Sci Fi Channel. Emmet Asher-Perrin of Tor.com deemed the miniseries a better adaptation than the 1984 Lynch film, but wrote that "it doesn't reach spectacular heights due to the desire to be as close to the written text as possible." She wrote that "the story naturally drags at certain points in the book that work in prose but not on screen", and added that "the narrative gets over-explained in an effort to be sure that no one watching is left behind." Asher-Perrin suggested that Harrison's choice to cast adult actor Newman as Paul is problematic because the character is written in the script as less mature and observant than he is in the source novel, but she praised many members of the cast, in particular McNeice and Cox. Asher-Perrin also complimented the special effects, set design, and costuming.
