Game of Thrones ended in 2019, but pretty much everyone knew that wouldn’t be the end. The show was too popular for HBO to just sit there, so it wasn’t a surprise when they started making House of the Dragon, a prequel show about the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Except that in 2022.
But that was just the beginning. Recently, we’ve learned of several other Game of Thrones spin-offs in development, including an animated drama, a show that tells the story of Robert Baratheon’s rebellion against the Mad King Aerys Targaryen, and an adaptation of Tales of Dunk and Egg, a series of novellas by George R.R. Martin set in Westeros about 90 years before the events of the original series.
All of these new shows are in the early stages, and there’s no guarantee we’ll actually see them come to the screen. In fact, there’s been no official confirmation they exist…until now. Speaking to TV Line, HBO chief content officer Casey Bloys confirmed that the Dunk and Egg show is indeed in development, and sounded off on HBO’s strategy when it comes to these spin-off shows overall:
Obviously, we know George has this incredible world with all of this really rich and complicated history and all of these characters. So we’ve been trying to be thoughtful about what are the stories that are worth telling. What would be exciting? What would fans love? Dunk and Egg is one of those, but not the only one.
In addition to thinking about what the fans want, HBO will also take into account what the network and creatives it works with are most excited about. “We’ll let the creative dictate where we end up.”
George R.R. Martin has said he didn’t want to make a Tales of Dunk and Egg show, but HBO is making one anyway
That last part is particularly interesting, because George R.R. Martin went on record years ago as saying that he didn’t want to make either a Dunk and Egg or a Robert’s Rebellion show. About Dunk and Egg, he wrote:
We’re not doing Dunk & Egg. Eventually, sure, I’d love that, and so would many of you. But I’ve only written and published three novellas to date, and there are at least seven or eight or ten more I want to write. We all know how slow I am, and how fast a television show can move. I don’t want to repeat what happened with GAME OF THRONES itself, where the show gets ahead of the books. When the day comes that I’ve finished telling all my tales of Dunk & Egg, then we’ll do a tv show about them… but that day is still a long ways off.
And about Robert’s Rebellion:
We’re not doing Robert’s Rebellion either. I know thousands of you want that, I know there’s a petition… but by the time I finish writing A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, you will know every important thing that happened in Robert’s Rebellion. There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know. That’s not a story I want to tell just now; it would feel too much like a twice-told tale.
Both those quotes are from the same 2017 blog post. And now, HBO is doing both ideas.
Did something change? Did Martin come around? Or is he against this new direction, which could account for his silence on the topic lately? According to industry sources, Martin is “working directly” with HBO on these new series, so the question is open.
Whatever’s going on behind the scenes, big things are happening for the Game of Thrones franchise. And we may just be getting started.
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