Trivia / Frank Herbert's Children of Dune

• Billing Displacement: Leto II is the main character of two out of three chapters, yet in the credits, James McAvoy is listed ninth (this is shown on the back cover of the North American DVD release). Moreover, McAvoy's name never appears on any promotional material.
  • This is rectified on the most recent Blu-Ray covers. James McAvoy receives top billing on both the 2017 US release & the 2020 UK release, above Susan Sarandon who is the only other actor billed on both covers. A shirtless Leto II is front & center on the 2017 US cover. He is also the only character featured on the 2020 UK Blu-Ray cover.
• Creator Couple: Alec Newman and Julie Cox were an item at the time.
• Dawson Casting:
  • The nine-year-old Leto II and Ghanima were aged up to their late teens in the miniseries, and were played by actors in their early 20s.
  • Daniela Amavia plays Alia Atreides. In the second episode of the series, Alia mentions she was only 15 when she became regent and the twins' birth, meaning the then 37-year-old Amavia was playing a teenager at the time of release.
• The Other Darrin: Several actors do not return from the first Dune mini-series; those who were recast include the Lady Jessica, Stilgar and Duncan Idaho among others.
  • In Lady Jessica's case, Alice Krige has been the original choice to play her in the first miniseries. When Saskia Reeves was unable to reprise the role due to her pregnancy, the filmmakers simply recast her with Krige.
• Promoted Fanboy: James McAvoy was a huge fan of the Dune novels prior to starring in this mini-series. So was Susan Sarandon.
• Role Reprise: Paul, Irulan, Chani, Gurney, Baron Harkonnen, Otheym and Mohiam are all played by the same actors as the previous miniseries.
• What Could Have Been: Despite being a critical and commercial success, the Sci-Fi Channel never tried to follow up on this by adapting the later books of the Dune novel series. A couple of answers have been given for this but nothing definitive: the later books have time skips on the scale of thousands of years, so hardly any recognizable characters would reappear in them (apart from a few ghola-clones). Children of Dune had the benefit that the first Dune miniseries was well-received, and that many of the original cast were willing to return to follow their characters. On top of this, the next book in the series, God-Emperor of Dune, is much more cerebral, and would have been difficult to adapt on-screen both for that reason and the difficulties that would have been presented convincingly realizing Leto II's giant worm form with the effects technology available on an early-mid 2000s budget. These issues aside, it was a successful miniseries, and the central character who needed to reappear was Leto II — played by James McAvoy, a massive fan of the books. The general consensus among fandom is that the main reason they never continued into adapting the later books was due to fundamental behind-the-scenes shifts at the network, as the "Syfy Channel" made a big shift away from actual science-fiction programming in the late 2000s, in favor of cheaper reality show programming. This period lasted from around 2006 to 2011, by which point none of the controversial executives who were with the channel from before 2011 even worked there anymore, but by that point the damage was done.
• You Look Familiar: Karel Dobrý, who played Dr. Liet-Kynes in the first miniseries, plays the completely unrelated Korba.

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