HBOWhen Game of Thrones bowed out this year, the world said goodbye to the biggest television show of all time. However, ‘what is dead may never die’ – a Targaryen prequel is in the works.
The series’ fixture in the pop culture lexicon was titanic – while its last season proved to be fiercely divisive, fans’ appetites are being whet at the prospect of spin-offs in Westeros.
HBO is known to have been actively working on spin-offs for quite sometime now, set to take place before the events of the show and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels.
HBOWhile little details are known, if any, rumours point towards a show based around the Targaryens – with Martin feeding the fire of that theory.
The author commented on the rumour that Daenerys’ ancestors would factor into the story, teasing the inclusion of the creatures everyone turns out to see: dragons.
On his personal blog, Martin said:
I can say that there will be dragons. Everyone else has said that, so why not me?
The Game of Thrones author uses his website to communicate directly with generations of fans of the books and the show.
HBOThe HBO showrunners, David Benioff And D.B. Weiss, had been operating off-book since the seventh season, when they ran out of material from Martin.
Readers have been waiting for his upcoming novel The Winds of Winter since the last book arrived back in 2011. There was also a six year gap before A Dance with Dragons was released, so the wait is to be expected.
HBOOne spin-off is already firmly in motion, with a pilot for Jane Goldman’s still-to-be-named prequel in post-production – it’ll star Naomi Watts and be set thousands of years before the events in Game of Thrones, with the infamous Long Night war with the White Walkers looming.
As for a second show, one revolving around the Targaryens, HBO are nearing a pilot order. However, as much as that’s not huge news, Martin says ‘all signs are good’.
On his blog, Martin added:
I do want to point out that ‘moving closer to a pilot order’ is NOT the same thing as ‘getting a pilot order’.
This is encouraging, this is exciting, but don’t buy the couch just yet. When HBO actually gives us a pilot order, you will hear me shouting it from the rooftops.
A series order, and I’ll be shouting even louder. But we’ll see. Right now all the signs are good, but nothing is confirmed.
Martin published Fire and Blood earlier this year; a history of House Targaryen that spans roughly 150 years that would likely serve the basis of the prequel.
HBOEntertainment Weekly report the spin-off would lead up to and eventually chronicle the house’s civil war – the legendary Dance of the Dragons.
If one thing is certain, Martin is keen for the legacy of his fantasy to march on. ‘The world of Ice & Fire is a WORLD, boys and girls. Huge continents, ten thousand years of history, cities, deserts, oceans, mysteries, triumphs and tragedies,’ the author wrote.
The eight season has amassed seven Emmy nominations: through its entire run, Game of Thrones has been nominated for 160 Emmys, winning 57 of them.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.