HBO Plans To Branch Out With GAME OF THRONES Spinoffs
For the last six years, audiences have been mesmerized by HBO’s series adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game Of Thrones books. Recently they’ve announced that the series will end after season eight. However, fans of Westeros will not have to mourn too long after the end because HBO announced deals with four different writers to explore other story lines of other inhabitants of the world. If these shows are picked up (yet to be determined), it will also mark the first-time HBO has made a spinoff series of one of their hits.
They have not declared a timeline for the development of the projects. “We’ll take as much or as little time as the writers need and, as with all our development, we will evaluate what we have when the scrips are in,” a spokesperson said.
The four projects will each explore different times periods in Westeros, but whether they will be prequels, sequels, or spinoffs with a main character remain unknown. Martin has claimed to have thousands of pages of the history of Westeros and there are plenty of minor characters that could be explored.
The writers chosen are Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (Kingsman: the Golden Circle), Brian Helgeland (Legend), and Carly Wray (Mad Mend). Goldman and Wray will each work separately with creator George R. R. Martin.
Last year at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, HBO programming president Casey Bloys said that HBO had talked about possible spinoffs but it had to make sense creatively. At this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff suggested they would not be involved if the spinoffs did occur, feeling that it would be good to get new blood in with new visions.
Season 7 of Game of Thrones will premiere July 16 with seven episodes. Weiss and Benioff have already begun writing the eighth and final season which will have six to eight episodes.
