tinysalamander: Why not? There are many “aren't loyal to the source material” games which are loved by fans. You might get a bit of that, and a bit of that, or who knows what entirely, but there is opportunity.

With “eternal” copyright you get nothing other than what someone approved. And that someone can't even write a single good Dune book :/ The more works you get, the more chance you have to get at least something of substance.

Crosmando: How would YOU feel if you spent the better part of your whole life writing a novel series and then saw it abused to make crappy games which neither understood nor cared about the source material. Copyright exists for people to protect their intellectual property.

Swedrami: From their 4th quarter of 2018 financial report:

"Exclusive gaming partnership established with Legendary Entertainment for the creation of a minimum of 3 games based on the DUNE Intellectual Property over the next six years, on PC and Console"

"Finally, we are very excited to announce an exclusive gaming partnership with Legendary Entertainment to develop a line of video games based on the works of Frank Herbert’s DUNE. DUNE is one of the world’s best-known science fiction universes and a personal favourite of mine. To work on DUNE games is a dream come true for many of us in Funcom. We will talk more about what we will do in this fantastic universe in the future."

It's not mentioned in the report as far as I can tell, but other sites are claiming the first project to be an open-world MMO similar to some of Funcom's other MMOs, for example based on the Conan franchise.

Ugh.