I'm not so sure about Dune. I think it calls for (at least) a limited series, rather than a film. However, it's about far more than Paul. There are lots of complex themes and the most important setting in the story isn't on Arrakis; it's in peoples' heads. I think you can make a good show. I'm not sure it'll be Dune.

Agreed but I don’t think it has to be exactly like the book it just has to tell a good story. That’s a lot easier to do for Dune than Foundation.

I'd say that Dune, as a single book, is a metaphor for a local Arab community rising up to overthrow a pair of colonial powers (Brits/Harkonnen and American/Atreidis) to take control of their own oil reserves (spice). It is a story about Jihad, a word that is used many times in the books but is notably absent in the latest film. Start changing too many characters and the metaphors to our real world fall apart.

It's about a marginalised community's manipulation by a cynical religious cult, which indoctrinates them to await a messiah, then provides them with that messiah in order to usurp power over their entire society for the cult's own nefarious ends.

Your forgetting the surprise twist though. The cult loses control of that very society in part due to that very indoctrination.

Who could have guessed a psychic messiah would be hard to control.

That and breeding a super being into existence, which makes the Golden Path necessary. Although, the Bene Gesserit may have thought they were doing all this for the good of human kind. Considering the kind of ossified, medieval structure in place for thousands of years they had to work with.