Get ready for a long winter. We won’t be getting any new Game of Thrones TV shows until 2022 according to Casey Bloys, the chief of programming at HBO. That’s when he says spin-off series House of the Dragon is most likely going to land, coming to both HBO and Warner’s upcoming streaming service, HBO Max.
While that may seem a long time away — and even that is only a guess that Bloys is making — the show is really only just now getting going. There are no production dates yet and Bloys says the creative team is just now getting settled in to develop the story. It’s a long road from there for the straight-to-series prestige show based on George R.R. Martin’s book, Fire & Blood.
The series is one of two prequel shows that HBO had been developing. House of the Dragon is set 300 years before Game of Thrones and will focus on House Targaryen. The other series, led by Jane Goldman, was ultimately shelved by HBO. It was going to be set even further in the past but couldn’t come together for a variety of reasons.
“Pilots – sometimes they come together, sometimes they don’t,” said Bloys. “And I would say that was very much the case here. There’s nothing I would point to and say, ‘Oh, this was the problem.’”
“That [prequel] was 8,000 years before the current show, so it required a lot more invention,” he said. “One of the benefits of House of the Dragon is there was a text from George and there was a little bit more of a roadmap. [Goldman’s prequel] did have more challenges in terms of establishing a world, but I think she handled that beautifully… there wasn’t one glaring thing.”
In the end, that means a very long wait for any new Game of Thrones. Of course, HBO’s competitors are fine with that as everyone races to find the next insanely successful fantasy series. Netflix won the race with its popular Witcher adaptation, but Amazon is close behind with both a Wheel of Time series and a new Lord of the Rings show. A game of thrones, indeed.
