We were few and the grandmother gave birth. This could be applied to the television universe of Game of Thrones based on the fantasy novels of G.R.R. Martin. HBO was in no rush to hastily squeeze the success of the series created by David Benioff and Dan Weiss, which said goodbye in 2019, but this does not mean that they will settle for a single spin-off series like House of the Dragon.
Now The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively reported that screenwriter Mattson Tomlin, who worked on the last adaptation of The Batman and is writing the sequel, is also working on this fictional universe. So let’s recap. How many Game of Thrones series are there in development? How many have received the green light? And which ones fell by the wayside?
This is the only project that has been released after the end of Game of Thrones. The House of the Dragon tells the dynastic battle between two factions of the Targaryen family: the defenders of Rhaenyra, who believe that the firstborn of Viserys I should occupy the Iron Throne, and those who believe that that position should be occupied by the male children of Alicent , the second wife of the late king.
Created by Ryan Condal and G.R.R. Martin, who has an agreement with HBO through which he helps develop projects linked to Westeros, premiered the first season in August 2022 and was set two centuries before the events of Game of Thrones. It was a success with both audiences and critics, winning the Golden Globe for best drama series and being nominated for an Emmy in the same category.
The cast headed by Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke and Matt Smith has already filmed the second season, which is awaiting release in August 2024. It benefited from being filmed in England: having the actors under a British agreement, filming did not It had to stop because of the writers’ strike.
G.R.R. Martin wrote short stories between 1998 and 2010 about two knights nicknamed Dunk and Egg, who eventually become the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and King Aegon V: “A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes roamed the world. Westeros: a young, naive but brave knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg.”
In April 2023, The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is based on these tales, received the green light to produce a first season. It does not yet have a cast and, apart from having the author, it will have Ira Parker as scriptwriter and executive producer after working on House of the Dragon. Ryan Condal and Vince Gerardis will also be on board.
In January, G.R.R. Martin reported on his blog that he was working on Nine Voyages, a series about the nine legendary voyages that allowed Corlys Velaryon, the character played by Steve Toussaint in The House of the Dragon, to accumulate wealth and power. From Yi Ti, a region of Essos, he brought spices or silk. In Asshai, the port city on the same continent, he lost one of the loves of his life and half of his crew. He was also the first man from Westeros to sail the Thousand Islands of the Shivering Sea.
The interesting thing is that, while it had originally been developed as a live-action series, HBO now thinks of Nine Voyages as an animated series to reduce costs: aquatic series are expensive to make and the logistics of creating a new port in Each episode was unthinkable to them. There are two other animated series in development for which no details are known and, at the moment, neither has been commissioned to produce a first season.
Kit Harington appeared in the offices of HBO with an idea: to create a spin-off of Jon Snow, the character he played for eight seasons in Game of Thrones, which he himself would star in and produce. It became known in June 2022. He believes there is more history there. “At the end of the series we find him in that cell, preparing to be beheaded and he is doing well. He is finished. The fact that they sent him to the Wall is his greatest gift and also his curse,” he recalled.
“He has to go back to a place with all that history and live that life thinking about how he killed Daenerys, and live that life thinking about Ygritte dying in his arms, and live that life thinking about how he hanged Olly, and live that life thinking in all this trauma, and this… is interesting,” he explained according to statements collected by Entertainment Weekly. HBO, however, has not clarified what the future of this project is.
With The House of the Dragon on the air and The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in pre-production, they cannot be in a hurry either, at least if they continue with their philosophy of taking care of the brand and not overwhelming the public with an excess of supply that reduces the event effect of the productions.
As we said, a new spin-off by Mattson Tomlin has just been launched, which the screenwriter is considering to see if HBO will buy it. What exactly would it say? The story of how Aegon the Conqueror managed to annex six of the seven kingdoms in just two years, through force, blood and brutality. Only Dorne resisted. This would imply that we would know Westeros three centuries before the events of Game of Thrones and approximately a century before The House of the Dragon.
And, if in the end it was announced that Nine Voyages is planned as an animated series, it is unknown at what point two other spin-offs are in development in this same format: 10,000 ships, which was going to be set a millennium before Game of Thrones to see the journey that Princess Nymeria made, and Flea Bottom, which was going to tell the story of everyday life in the poorest, unsanitary, prostitute-filled and conflictive neighborhood of King’s Landing.
And, let’s remember, there is a series that actually filmed a few sequences. HBO spent 35 million to record the first episode of Bloodmoon, a prequel with Naomi Watts, which aimed to show Westeros 7,000 years before Daenerys’ arrival in Westeros. Jane Goldman was at the helm as showrunner and filming took place in the Canary Islands.
It was going to have a more fantastical approach, treating a continent with the most present magic, some Children of the Forest as native inhabitants of the land and humans as a presence that could upset the balance. Among his incentives was to discover exactly how white walkers were created. The result did not convince the channel. One of the risks, as recognized by G.R.R. Martin, is that it was a stage that he had barely addressed in the novels and, therefore, they had to create new mythology.
