Could the Game of Thrones universe grow as big as Marvel or Star Wars? Probably not, but “I don’t think it’s just going to be the one [show] for the rest of its life.”
HBO Max launched earlier this year, and it’s been going…okay. The name is weird and the price is too high and the subscriber count is well below Disney+, to say nothing of Netflix, but WarnerMedia’s new streaming service is getting out there, with the new plan to release all of Warner Bros.’ 2021 movies on streaming as well as in theaters possibly giving it a lift…assuming the execs can calm filmmakers furious that their movies won’t release only in theaters; for HBO Max, it always seems like it’s one step forward, one step back.
The idea, as HBO/HBO Max chief content officer Casey Bloys laid it out to Variety, is for the streaming service to bring in people who weren’t originally on board with HBO. “Remember, HBO — our subscriber count is about 35 million. That was about our top,” he said. “So there’s a lot of people who have never experienced the library of programming that HBO has to offer. On HBO Max, we have kind of put together a lot of amazing brands and content from Friends reruns, Big Bang Theory, South Park, Studio Ghibli, all sorts of library that we’re going to take advantage of people coming in to try the movies, and hopefully they will see what a great value HBO Max is.”
One of the problems on HBO Max is that it doesn’t have an exclusive hit people can’t find anywhere else; there’s no Stranger Things, no The Mandalorian. One of the shows that could fill that role is House of the Dragon, the network’s followup to the tremendously popular Game of Thrones, due out in 2022.
But is House of the Dragon an HBO show or an HBO Max show? The membrane is kind of permeable, which is yet another of the service’s problems: it’s can be hard to tell what exactly it is. Even Bloys seemed unsure. “It is an HBO show,” he said of House of the Dragon. “What that means in ’22, could there be some sort of sneak or something? I mean, who knows? Like I said before, we were talking Euphoria, which we released early on Max the weekend before its linear premier. Who knows? I mean, ’22 seems so long away and so far out, so we’ll see.”
Who knows, right? Well, Disney+ seems to have any minute of its life planned out for years, but I guess we can try the fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants strategy, too.
Variety also asked Bloys if the Game of Thrones universe could become as big as the Marvel and Star Wars universes, which are currently bursting with content. “Those are fantastic properties that are decades and decades old,” he said. “I don’t know that it would get that big, but certainly it is a great resource that we have and an amazing world. So I don’t think it’s just going to be the one [show] for the rest of its life.”
According to Variety, Bloys said that “he imagines other potential series will be developed within the world created by George R.R. Martin,” meaning that House of the Dragon may not be the last spinoff we hear about. But let’s try and clear that hurdle before anything else. “I just want to get shooting first,” Bloys said.
Filming on House of the Dragon starts in a few months, with casting well underway. Fire and blood are coming.
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