Blade Runner Meets Dune In The 2-Part Sci-Fi Series HBO Max Threw Away

Published Aug 9, 2026, 7:30 PM EDT Tom is a Senior Staff Writer at Screen Rant, with expertise covering everything from hilarious sitcoms to jaw-dropping sci-fi epics. Initially he was an Updates writer, though before long he found his way to the TV and movies team. He now spends his days keeping Screen Rant readers informed about the TV shows of yesteryear, whether it's recommending hidden gems that may have been missed by genre fans or deep diving into ways your favorite shows have (or haven't) stood the test of time. Tom is based in the UK and when he's not writing about TV shows, he's watching them. He's also an avid horror fiction writer, gamer, and has a Dungeons and Dragons habit that he tries (and fails) to keep in check. If there are two sci-fi franchises that feel more suited to the scale of theatrical releases than to TV, it's Blade Runner and Dune. Dune has already had several TV interpretations, most recently 2024’s Dune: Prophecy, while Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 is on the way, but both properties remain closely tied to their roots as predominantly theatrical experiences. Their grand ideas and visual ambition feel like they need the room that only the cinema screen can provide. The complexity of Blade Runner and Dune is partly what makes the success of their movies so difficult to replicate on TV. Their appeal depends on incredibly dense themes that it’s easy for a television series to lose itself in at the expense of narrative cohesion. Any TV series that captures the magic of either Blade Runner or Dune deserves attention, but one that manages to echo both is particularly unusual. Such a series does exist, however, and it is HBO’s Raised By Wolves, a sprawling sci-fi drama produced by Ridley Scott. Debuting in 2020, Raised By Wolves follows two androids, Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim), who attempt to raise human children on the remote planet Kepler-22b after a devastating war leaves Earth uninhabitable. From there, the series expands into a strange story about artificial vs. human consciousness, faith and prophecy, and the possibility that humanity does not understand the forces shaping its future. It captures the thematic depth and sharp conceptual exploration that make Blade Runner and Dune so iconic, which makes its eventual fate at HBO beyond frustrating. Raised By Wolves Brought The Deep Themes Of Dune And Blade Runner To The Small Screen The easiest way to understand Raised By Wolves is to view it as a meeting point between Blade Runner and Dune. Like Blade Runner, it repeatedly questions what makes someone human. Mother and Father are synthetic beings, yet their capacity for familial attachment and parental instinct makes the distinction between artificial intelligence and human consciousness increasingly difficult to define. That idea gives the series a distinctly Blade Runner-like philosophical edge, but the world and premise of Raised By Wolves also has a significant overlap with Dune. Humanity has fled a devastated Earth and established a fragile settlement on the hostile Kepler-22b, where survival depends on adapting to an environment that remains profoundly dangerous, just like House Atreides when they first arrive on Arrakis. What’s more, characters in Raised By Wolves are also surrounded by religious conflict, with competing belief systems and a central prophecy not unlike Paul and his Fremen Jihad being integral to the narrative. What makes the combination so effective is that Raised By Wolves does not simply borrow the aesthetics or themes of either Blade Runner or Dune, but meshes them to create something truly unique. It uses their central ideas to examine artificial life and parenthood, as well as the danger of placing absolute trust in an ideology or higher power. While there are Dune TV shows and, soon, Blade Runner 2099, Raised By Wolves may still be the definitive small screen experience for fans of either franchise. Warner Bros. Discovery Almost Scrubbed Raised By Wolves From Existence Despite its critical acclaim and devoted following, Raised By Wolves was canceled by HBO Max after only two seasons in 2022. The announcement arrived only months after Season 2 ended, leaving the story unfinished and its increasingly ambitious mythology hanging on a cliffhanger. HBO Max's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, did not provide a specific reason for the cancellation, but it came amid the major corporate upheaval following the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger and a broader push to cut costs. The decision prompted an immediate fan backlash, with the cast and creative team publicly encouraging viewers to campaign for the series to continue elsewhere. That response made sense given how much story remained to tell, particularly because Raised By Wolves had spent its first two seasons expanding rather than resolving its central mysteries. However, while cancellation was already a disappointing outcome for such an unusual sci-fi series, what happened next was considerably harsher. In December 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery removed Raised By Wolves from HBO Max as part of a wider cull of shows, including several that had been completed. The company said it was licensing selected programs to third-party free, ad-supported streaming services, a strategy that reduced costs by avoiding ongoing residual payments while also creating licensing opportunities. For Raised By Wolves, that meant its original home disappeared just as fans were trying to preserve interest in the show. The series subsequently appeared on services including Roku's free, ad-supported channels, though not permanently. Today, availability can vary significantly by region and platform, making it far harder to discover than a major HBO original should be. Beyond physical releases and occasional appearances on free services, Raised By Wolves has effectively become a difficult-to-find piece of modern sci-fi history, which is an especially frustrating fate for a series that offered one of TV's closest intersections between genre titans Blade Runner and Dune. Release Date 2020 - 2022-00-00 Network HBO Max Showrunner Aaron Guzikowski Directors Alex Gabassi, Luke Scott, Ernest R. Dickerson, Lukas Ettlin, Ridley Scott, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Sunu Gonera Writers Aaron Guzikowski Creator(s) Aaron Guzikowski