BOOM! Studios Announces “Dune: House Atreides” Comics Series

Via The Hollywood Reporter, BOOM! Studios have announced they will publish a 12-issue comic book adaptation of Dune: House Atreides, the 1999 prequel to Frank Herbert’s original novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Herbert and Anderson will return to adapt their novel, while the artists and start date for the comic — which will debut later this year — will be announced at a later time.

The first novel in the Prelude to Dune trilogy, House Atreides takes place 35 years before the original Dune, during the early days of Baron Harkonnen’s rule of Arrakis (aka “Dune”). It follows the young Leto Atreides — the father of the original protagonist — as he prepares to spend a year studying on the mechanized world of Ix; planetologist Pardot Kynes as he seeks to uncover the origins of Arrakis’s “spice;” and an 8-year-old Duncan Idaho as he escapes slavery.

“It’s been more than 20 years since Brian and I published House Atreides, the first of our new novels set in Frank Herbert’s Dune universe,” Anderson declared in a statement. “We loved exploring all the possibilities Frank created for us, and those books introduced a whole new audience to Dune. Now, in adapting House Atreides into a vibrant graphic format, it’s like rediscovering the story and the world all over again. So much of the novel is visually driven, the union of comics and House Atreides is a natural.”

The comic is being published in coordination with Abrams ComicArts, who are publishing a three-part adaptation of the original book beginning this fall, also scripted by Brian Herbert and Anderson, with art by Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín. These projects will coincide with Warner Bros. and Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming movie reboot (starring Oscar Isaac as Atreides, Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Harkonnen, and Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho), due out December 18, 2020.