Why 'Dune' made these 5 key changes from Frank Herbert's book

Denis Villeneuve first read Frank Herbert's classic 1965 sci-fi novel "Dune" when he was around 13, and for an impressionable future filmmaker growing up in Quebec, Canada, the book was like an oasis in the desert.

"I became obsessed with it," Villeneuve says. "'Dune' merged with the birth of my love of cinema. It became a book that stayed with me through the years and that I kept beside me."

So when he set about to tackle the dense, philosophical and supposedly unadaptable book, Villeneuve was determined to stay as faithful as he could to Herbert's vision. "My goal was really to make sure that the hardcore fans will find the atmosphere and poetry of the book intact," he says of the highly anticipated $165 million production, now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

That's not to say, though, that Villeneuve and his co-writers, Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts, didn't make some changes in translating the nearly 60-year-old novel — which chronicles the battle for dominion of the desert planet of Arrakis and the rise of reluctant messianic figure Paul Atreides