HBO is Still Pursuing a GAME OF THRONES Prequel Series
It's no secret HBO is desperate to keep telling stories in Westeros well beyond when Game of Thrones comes to an end. The network has been dropping hints about wanting a spinoff show for a very long time, and now we have a brand new update, which essentially boils down to: yep, they still want a spinoff.
EW caught up with HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who said the network is still in talks with author George R.R. Martin about ideas for a follow-up show.
"I would say it’s still kind of preliminary ongoing talks. There are areas we are exploring, but I wouldn’t point to any one and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’"
Martin himself previously spoke about the possibility of a prequel show:
"I do have thousands of pages of fake history of everything that led up to Game of Thrones. There’s a wealth of material there, and I’m still writing more....At the moment, we still have this show to finish, and I still have two more books to finish.”
If — let's face it...when — a prequel show is eventually given the greenlight, we know that current showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss aren't interested in coming back for more:
“You might want to ask George about that...It’s a great world that George created. It’s a very rich world. I’m sure there will be other series set in Westeros. But for us, this is it.”
Another idea that's caused a lot of talk online has been the notion of closing out the story with a Game of Thrones theatrical feature film instead of letting the series end naturally on TV. (Last year, we saw how terribly that worked with Entourage.) But thankfully, it doesn't sound as if Bloys is interested in making people pay for a movie ticket to see how the show will end. In the same interview in which he talked about how they're still exploring ideas for a prequel, he said this about the possibility of a movie:
“I want everything I can get for HBO, I’ll just leave it at that.”
Game of Thrones returns in 2017 for its seventh season, which is rumored to consist of seven episodes. Its eighth season is supposed to be its last, and as of now, that season is only supposed to contain six episodes.