It’s already on its third series, but the Game of Thrones universe has no intentions of slowing down any time soon of author George RR Martin or HBO has any say in the matter.
Starting with the currently airing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, it seems it’s one of Martin’s favourite series to write and while he has big plans, the 77-year-old admits he has a lot of their story in his head, but needs to get them writen down: “I’ve got to get them down on paper,” he says, “I began writing two at various points in the past year. One is set in Winterfell and one set in the Riverlands.”
However, he is very happy with the series so far: “It turned out very well, and I’m very happy with season one. The casting was a home run [Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his 10-year-old squire (Dexter Sol Ansell) are superb so far]. [Showrunner Ira Parker] is terrific and seems to have the same priorities I do — he’s trying to do something that’s very true to the characters.”
This is clearly a nod to Martin’s rocky and very public relationship on the other GoT spinoff, House of the Dragon, where he says everything was going well in the first season, but by season two, his input was simply ignored. We’ll get back to this.
Back to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (AKOTSK), which Martin says came about because HBO needed a less costly series: “This doesn’t have any dragons or big battles. It has a field and a lot of tents and some horses.”
The fact that the Game of Thrones universe still seems to be running well at all is something of a miracle, given how poorly received (and bad) the last season of the main series was received when it aired in 2019, a mistake Martin insists he won’t make when he (finally) gets the last book in the series finished, something he insists he’s pretty close to, though he’s finding it a struggle.
“[The book’s ending is] going to be significantly different,” Martin says. “Some characters who are alive in my book are going to be dead in the show, and vice versa.”
Another spinoff that almost was, involved Kitt Harington’s Jon Snow and what his life was after the end og Game of Thrones; the series would have dealt with Snow suffering PTSD and struggling to find reason in his life, however, HBO didn’t seem keen on the idea and the show was scrapped and now Drops of God’s writer Quoc Dang Tran has picked the idea up and the series will likely now focus on Maisie Williams’ Arya Stark, left, instead.
With Harington recently making it clear he didn’t “want to go anywhere near” Jon Snow again, this is probably for the best.
In all the recent news and updates, one of the most exciting is that Clone Wars and Primal’s Genndy Tartakovsky may be working on the animated series based on the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon, played by Steve Toussaint in House of the Dragon, called Nine Voyages.
WATCH: A new bloody trailer is here for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come! New poster too!
HBO CEO Casey Bloys hints that Game of Thrones’ future will vary between high cost and low budget, depending on the requeirement of the story: “Our business has always been a portfolio business, which means you can have shows like The Last of Us or House Of the Dragon, and you can also have smaller-scale shows like Somebody Somewhere or The Chair Company, adding things that can come back on an annual basis, like The Pitt, or adding things where the creative lends itself, in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I don’t want to say an easier production, but something that allows you, on a smaller scale, to produce and come back on an annual basis.”
Blys confirms that AKOTSK is currently filming its second season, and a third season is being looked at, with the long-term plans still unknown, likely depending on Martin, as he says, getting the stories down on paper. He also confirms that House of the Dragon’s fourth season – season three has yet to air – will be its last: “That is the idea. The idea has always been to follow the history of the Targaryens. If you know the books, you know how the Targaryens end up. So there is a natural end to this particular history of that House of the Targaryens.”
So, despite the shaky ending to the original series, it seems that the Game of Thrones universe is alive and well and showing no signs of stopping… without or without George RR Martin’s vision on paper or not.
Thoughts? I know you have the,m and I wanna hear ’em all.
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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