HBO has been pushing forward with a large expansion of their Game of Thrones franchise with a string of spinoffs going into development. One was a White Walker prequel, titled Bloodmoon aka The Long Night, the pilot starring Naomi Watts (The Ring, King Kong) didn’t get picked-up for a series order. Another handful of potential spinoff series got nixed in development phases but the next wave was announced.
Recently, HBO has instead pivoted to another prequel series that is an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s House of The Dragon, that one is shooting soon in Belfast and will start airing in 2022. There are reports they are also looking to make a series based on Martin’s Knight of The Seven Kingdoms (collection of novellas about a Westeros knight and his squire) called The Tales of Dunk & Egg.
There are even more shows on the horizon according to Deadline. They’ve learned that HBO is developing another three Game of Thrones projects including Sea Snake aka The 9 Voyages, Flea Bottom (slum in King’s Landing), and 10,000 Ships. Martin is working with Bruno Heller (Rome, Gotham, The Mentalist) on Sea Snake and is said to be the furthest in development stage out of the three projects.
Here is a rundown of two of the shows from Deadline, which sound like they’ll be more prequels taking place many years before the events of the original series.
The 9 Voyages series refers to the great voyages at sea made by Corlys Velaryon aboard the Sea Snake ship. Velaryon journeyed to places including Pentos, Dragonstone and around the bottom of Westeros as well as to Lys, Tyrosh and Myr. He reached the fabled lands of Yi Ti and Leng, whose wealth doubled that of the House Velaryon, and him and the Ice Wolf headed north searching for passage around the top of Westeros, only to find frozen seas and icebergs as big as mountains.
Lastly, there is a show based around the 10,000 Ships, a reference to the journey made by warrior queen Princess Nymeria and the surviving members of the Rhoynars, who travelled from Essos to Dorne following their defeat by the Valyrian Freehold in the Second Spice War. This migration took place around 1,000 years before the events depicted in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Arya Stark, played by Maisie Williams, named her direwolf after Nymeria.
Details are scarce concerning Flea Bottom and if they’ll attempt to explore established characters from the slum or just using the setting to explore new adventures.
Considering that George R.R. Martin is working with and breaking the show ideas with these showrunners/writers, I think they’ll be super faithful to the fantastic fantasy world he created but might be upsetting to fans that see this as more distractions leading to longer delays for The Winds of Winter.
SOURCE: DEADLINE
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