Game of Thrones season 8 might have only gone off the air just a few days ago, but people are already wondering about prequels, sequels and everything in between. For example, wouldn’t Arya exploring what’s west of Westeros make for the perfect follow-up?
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO programming president Casey Bloys gave a firm “no”:
Nope, nope, nope. No. Part of it is, I do want this show — this Game of Thrones, Dan and David’s show — to be its own thing. I don’t want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them off into another world with someone else creating it. I want to let it be the artistic piece they’ve got. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not trying to do the same show over. George [R.R. Martin] has a massive, massive world; there are so many ways in. That’s why we’re trying to do things that feel distinct — and to not try and redo the same show. That’s probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn’t make sense for us.
So I guess a show like this is out of the question?
Instead, the show is looking backwards, developing a number of series set in Westeros’ past. At the moment, they’re gearing up to film a pilot in June for a show set thousands of years before Jon, Daenerys, or anyone else was even born, when the White Walkers appeared to ravage Westeros for the first time. HBO has a couple other ideas percolating, but that’s the only one at present moving on to the pilot stage:
There are two more in development and beyond that, there’s nothing else to report. There are no plans currently to put anything more in development. We’re not actively looking or going beyond what we’ve got in the current pilot.
Bloys was coy about a potential airdate for the new season, encouraging us to “do the math” on the date. He also said that the wave of criticism leveled at the final season for the mother show won’t affect how showrunner Jane Goldman approaches the pilot. “We’re trying to have a show that feels like its own show within the universe but we’re not trying to replicate the same show,” he said “It’s not the same characters, it’s not the same dynamics. It’s not like we’re taking the existing show and saying, ‘X, Y and Z worked, so let’s do that.’”
Speaking of the criticism, Bloys fielded a lot of questions about it. “Basically for a show this big and this epic and this sprawling, they [creators/showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss] have to make choices,” he said. “What’s great about the show is it made people feel a lot of things — positive and negative. A lot of people had invested in characters and hoped for certain things and wanted to see certain twists. There’s probably a little bit of mourning going on that the show is over.”
Personally, my biggest issue with the final season was it’s lightning-fast pace, with many of its most epic moments not being allowed to breathe or resonate with fans before we moved on to the next moment. Bloys touched on that as well. “The guys have known what they’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. They’ve had a plan in their mind. I’ve been on the record saying I’d take five more seasons. But they’ve had a plan that they wanted to do and this made sense to them.”
As for what’s next for Benioff and Weiss, the duo are considering their options and fielding different offers (between making Star Wars movies for Disney), but Bloys seems hopeful that the duo will return to HBO. “I think they’re doing the right thing and seeing what’s out there,” he said. “We obviously have a strong relationship with them; Warner Bros. has worked with them both individually in the past. We’ll see where they end up. Obviously, we think they’re great. They’re going through the process they should go through.”
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