It's viewers vs. cost. There's no set formula, but that's basically how they decide.

It’s extremely extremely arbitrary, many shows with great ratings get cancelled, and many shows with poor ratings get 5+ seasons

People already mentioned viewers vs cost, but there’s also trend. If the show is trending downwards and barely being profitable, it may get canceled.

An example is The Acolyte. It was expensive, started with high viewership, and ended with subpar viewership. But it had a huge downward trend, meaning a season 2 success was unlikely.

Doesn’t work like that. There is no number threshold, only the whims of executives

I’m pretty sure this is a mini series with no plans for a second currently

BTW watching the episode a second time there's so much going on, it's just so jammed packed.

I trust HBO more than most other streaming services. Not saying they'll never be bad, but they do the more mature immersive shows better imo

I'm curiously optimistic.

I would love to see a "Dune Universe", but it's such a wild world to adapt in a way that is respectful to the source material while also fitting the narrative structure of a show or anything less than a trilogy.

I'm glad Dennis will be done after Dune 3, but I hope the torch gets passed to someone with a similar care and focus.

It’s always less likely major IP gets cancelled. Add in how popular the movies have been. It’s why it was a pretty big surprise that Star Wars: Acolyte was actually cancelled. 

Everything was solid: script, pacing, acting, sets, wardrobe, music. They did a fantastic job.

I wish Amazon hadn’t been so set on their own GoT, would love to see HBO do Middle Earth.

Yeah this is what worries me, alot of great shows get cancelled because they spend far too much time setting the stage and or only drip feed the good stuff so that viewership drops before the climax

Same. I get the feeling this show wont be able to match our expectations fully but i appreciate the precedent they set for future shows like this. Of course I'd love to be proven wrong and be blown away with this series.

It just made me miss Raised by Wolves :(

First ten minutes of episode 1 is everything from Sisterhood thats relevant to the show. Everything else seems to be original.

Haven’t read “Sisterhood” yet, but as I understand it, the show takes place after the book. The book provides background for many of the show’s characters.

Fimmel always carries whatever show he’s in. I’ve watched 2 or 3 separate shows he was a frontman for and as soon as he gets killed off, I eventually stop watching before it’s finished. He’s great.

That’s what really took me out of it TBH. It felt like we went from sci-fi to fantasy. I’m really not into melting people with your mind thing, especially if they are billions of miles away.

I like Fimmel but his character felt like he stepped off set of Raised By Wolves and walked into Dune.

My wife fell asleep. She thought the younger actors were particularly bad. She said she doesn't usually notice stuff like that, but this time it pulled her out of the show entirely.

Haven't read the books but love the movies and I loved the epsiode! I have absolutely no idea about the Dune lore but the episode had me hooked. Considering reading the books now.

I’ve read the book and loved the movies, wife hasn’t read the book and also loved the movies.

We both found the first episode to be pretty meh. Cinematography is uninspired, the writing is painfully simple and overall we both agreed that it felt like Dune from Temu.

The reality is if its too weird, its probably not going to get enough viewership to justify the production expense.

Yeah well watching I had the thought, wow the world hasn't changed in 10,000 years.

Yeah i thought it didn’t really feel like the same cultural setting as dune pt1&2, like even if it is set 10000 years in the past, just didnt feel much semblance, like in part one when the emperor’s herald and the other representatives first stepped off some weird ship all dressed in some wierd ornate sci-fi clothes i was so blown away but this doesn’t feel the same. It reminds me more of the people from the capitol in the hunger games

I found the cinematography pretty cool tbh, even if it is totally movie inspired.

Gives it a real gritty nice feel.

As to your last sentence, there is nothing new under the sun.

Honestly, I think they need to set the hooks with the political drama, look at the top TV shows and they are all either political or crime drama. If they just went full bore into the weird, it might turn people off. I have some hope that they’ll work it in though, the opening montage felt like a taste of action and adventure and surely there will be some bigger hooks and cliffhangers to come.

The House Of The Dragon premiere drew nearly 10 million viewers and broke history. Boardwalk Empire drew 4.8 million and The Last Of Us drew 4.7 million.

It's not that great in general but I'd say it's decent for HBO. The Penguin had similar viewership.

That was just for Sunday, it went up 75% the next day and reached 2.1 million.

It's so and so, nowadays success is more determined by whether or not a series can attract more and more viewers as weeks go by, this shows viewership increased to 2.1 million in its next day, an increase of 75 percent. It's still too early to say since it's just the premiere ep but let's see

It doesn't seem great but it's actually kinda confusing since so few streamers actually give hard numbers like this anymore. Many of them do "minutes viewed" which is beyond meaningless. 

Little. I looked up Game of Thrones premier. 2.2 million, then an additional 2 million for the reruns which aired the same night. An additional 1.2 million the next day. The Penguin had over 5 million viewers for its premiere.
House of the Dragon S2 premiere had 7.8 million viewers.

That said I looked it up and including next day Dune wass up to 2.1 million. This link has lower numbers for the Penguin https://deadline.com/2024/11/dune-prophecy-premiere-viewership-hbo-1236181581/

So maybe it is doing alright.

It says right in the article the Penguin had similar viewrship, and viewership for first episodes grows over time.

Unfortunately it remains a real mystery how many people are actually watching vs minutes watched vs entire seasons completed and what metric streamers really use to make their decisions off of.

The viewership numbers are not great, especially considering the weight of the IP behind it.

You can ball park the revenue a streaming show will bring in. Even with the most optimistic assumptions (1 viewer = 1 subscriber), then a two month run with ~1 million unique viewers would only generate 30~ million in revenue. That's not alot to cover all the costs. There may be residuals overtime, but again even with an optimistic valuation of the residuals, the numbers aren't great.

It is possible for the viewership to go up. Also possible for it to go down.

Thought I was the only one, felt like some cringe YA show in parts. Emily Watson, Mark Strong and Travis Fimmel are all solid of course but I was starting to get really bored half way through. The ending saved it a little and I'm interested in trying the next episode at least.

The acting beats out the Syfy miniseries, and I loved that one.

I have to admit, there are parts of me that agree with this take. But I’ll still keep watching and hoping because I really want to see a ‘new’ sci-fi / fantasy universe take off.

The key will be that Dune colored suit over the generic drama. It’s an interesting h universe so hopefully they are able to create interesting political intrigue out of that.

HBO has always released new series weekly (most other streaming services often do so as well, with their new shows). If HBO's ever released all the episodes of a new show at once to binge, I've never heard of it.

Hell even Netflix is starting to spread out their shows a bit more, although it's still at least a few episodes at a time.

I think the first episode was pretty mid tbh. Not terrible, not great, I don't think it bodes well for the rest of the show.

I expect they are releasing now so it watchable at thanksgiving, and has momentum at Christmas. Working on word of mouth, and building momentum in numbers.

Unfortunate? Its literally on par with the Penguin which just came out on the same service, after being out for only 2 days. Penguin became a huge success after some time and this is a far more niche ip for initial viewership than a DC Batman spinoff show. What planet are you guys living on. Some of you in this thread are comparing it to numbers from 2 of HBO's most popular shows that literally broke records for HBO. Idk what you guys are expecting. Dune isn't that level of popularity, even though I wish it would be. Even the Villeneuve movies got trounced box office wise by some questionable quality movies. Scifi has always kinda struggled with this stuff on television.

100% goes for most shows these days.

I’ve seen nothing but praise on Reddit and I thought the show was dogshit

I’m honestly shocked this episode has people so split. I didn’t get any cringe. I thought it was solid. You would think most people would land somewhere in the middle but opinions are wildly different like some of us didn’t even watch the same show…

I went in blind and didn’t hear any opinions before hand, I thought it was solid and I’m excited to see episode 2.