During its HBO Max presentation this evening, WarnerMedia announced that it had given a 10-episode, straight-to-series order to a Game of Thrones spinoff called House of the Dragon, set 300 years before the events of the first series.
According to Variety, the story is created by Ryan Condal (Colony), and that it’ll be based on a story from George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, about House Targaryen, the ancestors of Daenerys. Miguel Sapochnik, who directed a number of episodes of Game of Thrones, will direct the show’s pilot, as well as other episodes in the series.
#HouseOfTheDragon, a #GameofThrones prequel is coming to @HBO.
The series is co-created by @GRRMSpeaking and Ryan Condal. Miguel Sapochnik will partner with Condal as showrunner and will direct the pilot and additional episodes. Condal will be writing the series. pic.twitter.com/9ttMzElgXm
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) October 29, 2019
Martin has written about the project’s development before, saying earlier this year that the project and another were “in the script stage, but are edging closer.” Deadline also notes that it’ll incorporate some material from another series that HBO developed by Bryan Cogman a couple of years ago.
The news comes after word broke earlier today that one of its prequel shows HBO had in development, The Long Night, wasn’t moving beyond its pilot episode. It was set ten thousand years prior to Game of Thrones and would have starred Naomi Watts.
The announcement that HBO would be spinning off Game of Thrones is good news for the network: the series has remained incredibly popular, and while it has a number of genre projects on its schedule, like Watchmen and His Dark Materials, dropping Martin’s fantasy epic outright would made for a huge, dragon-sized hole in the network’s offerings.
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