If you’re losing track of how many “Game Of Thrones” spinoff/successor series are in the works, that’s okay, so are we. That said, it’s understandable that HBO is putting as many options on the table as possible when it comes to figuring out how they’re going to keep their most lucrative brand going. Now, they’ve got another spinning plate to consider.
Way back in the spring, George R.R. Martin revealed that he was working with a fifth, then unnamed writer on a potential ‘Thrones’ off shoot, and now the details have arrived. Series co-executive producer and writer Bryan Cogman has a pitch brewing. He’s the scribe behind season one’s “Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things,” season four’s “Oathkeeper,” and season seven’s “Stormborn.”
Cogman joins Max Borenstein (“Godzilla,” “Kong: Skull Island”), Jane Goldman (“Kick-Ass,” “Kingsman: The Secret Service”), Brian Helgeland (“L.A. Confidential”), and Carly Wray (“Mad Men,” “The Leftovers,” “Westworld“) in the flurry of potential new ‘Thrones’ shows, and each of them has Martin’s creative participation.
Before you start wondering if HBO might keep fan favorites from getting killed off in the hopes of giving them their own show, guess again. Any potential series would take place before the events of “Game Of Thrones,” and won’t feature any of the characters in the current show. Here’s what Martin said about it earlier this year:
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“For what it’s worth, I don’t especially like the term ‘spinoff,’ and I don’t think it really applies to these new projects. What we’re talking about are new stories set in the “secondary universe” (to borrow Tolkien’s term) of Westeros and the world beyond, the world I created for ‘A Song Of Fire And Ice.’ It is a world, and a pretty big one, and if there were eight million stories in the naked city back in the 50s, just think how many more there are in an entire world, and one with thousands of years of recorded history.
“None of these new shows will be ‘spinning off’ from GOT in the traditional sense. We are not talking ‘Joey‘ or ‘After MASH‘ or even ‘Frazier‘ [sic] or ‘Lou Grant,’ where characters from one show continue on to another. So all of you who were hoping for the further adventures of Hot Pie are doomed to disappointment. Every one of the concepts under discussion is a prequel, rather than a sequel. Some may not even be set on Westeros. Rather than ‘spinoff’ or ‘prequel,’ however, I prefer the term ‘successor show.’ That’s what I’ve been calling them.”
We’re probably not going to find out which of these shows gets selected as the one to follow “Game Of Thrones” anytime soon. With the final season likely not arriving until 2019, HBO has plenty of time to consider their many options. [THR]