Author George R.R. Martin gave an updated estimate on the release date of the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon this week. Martin was interview by local PBS affiliate WTTW Chicago on Thursday while he was in town to receive an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Northwestern University. During the conversation, he mentioned that he hoped the prequel would air in the “spring” of 2022.
Martin spoke retrospectively about his whole career with PBS this week, marveling at how the Seven Kingdoms of his imagination has gone on to spawn a global phenomenon. He said: “Now I’m developing more shows for HBO, we have a new show — House of the Dragon that’s coming down the pike, filming right now over in London and Cornwall over in England. It’ll probably be on next spring, I guess. But then I’m developing other shows for them.”
Martin’s delivery didn’t indicate that this was a date we can set our clocks by, but it is the first time we’ve heard someone close to House of the Dragon estimate what time it will be premiering. Previously all the announcements and promotional material simply said that the show was coming out in the year 2022, without narrowing it down.
A spring release would make House of the Dragon the TV event of the summer — a fitting time for the House of Fire and Blood. The show will be set about 180 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when House Targaryen ruled Westeros with an entire fleet of full-grown dragons at its disposal. It will depict a Targaryen civil war known as the “Dance of the Dragons” in Westerosi history.
In his interview, Martin noted that he was disappointed that Game of Thrones outpaced his original books and hinted once again that the ending will be different on the page than it was on the screen. He circumvented that problem with House of the Dragon by writing Fire and Blood — a fictional history book written about House Targaryen which describes the Dance of the Dragons from a broad perspective. This way, the whole story is complete for the showrunners to reference, but there is still plenty of room to flesh it out and fill in the gaps.
You can read the story yourself in Fire and Blood, available here on Amazon in print, digital and audiobook formats. House of the Dragon is filming now in the U.K., and Game of Thrones is still streaming on HBO Max.
