“As a filmmaker, I’ve always been attracted by femininity, and in a lot of my movies the main protagonist is female,” Villeneuve said. “Femininity is there in the book, but I thought it should be up front. I said to [co-writers] Eric [Roth] and Jon [Spaihts], ‘We need to make sure that Lady Jessica is not an expensive extra.’ She’s such a beautiful and complex character.”
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Following on his changes to Lady Jessica, Villeneuve made another move to foreground femininity: rewriting Dr. Liet Kynes, who viewers first meet as the Atreides arrive in the desert, as a woman. Readers of the novel will remember the character as a man appointed by the Imperium to act as the Judge of the Change, overseeing the hand-off of Arrakis from House Harkonnen to House Atreides. When Spaihts suggested gender-swapping the character, Villeneuve thought it was brilliant.
“It doesn’t change the nature of the character,” Villeneuve said. “It just makes it closer to the world today, and more relevant and frankly more interesting.”