HBO has revealed that, with the end of ’Game of Thrones’ in sight, the company is looking very seriously at the prospect of a spin-off series.
Casey Bloys, HBO’s president of original programming, has revealed to a live audience of television critics that HBO is considering the prospect of spin-off options from author George RR Martin’s original material.
Casey told the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour: “All I can say is that we’re exploring it. We don’t have any scripts, we’re not even close to saying ‘Oh, let’s do this.’
“But it’s a big enough property that we would be foolish not to explore it. It’s a really rich world. We’d be foolish not to look at it.”
With the show set to finish next year, there has been all sorts of speculation about the story continuing in some form. Show runner David Benioff has previously dismissed the idea of a prequel, fearing the story would “lose its heat and its momentum”.
He added that even with the most successful of projects, “people start to wonder when this is going to be over and hope that it will be over soon so they can move onto the next thing. That’s not what we ever wanted”.
Despite this fear, David Benioff and DB Weiss recently admitted there was a lot of rich material they could feast on for another show.
“One of the great things about what George [RR Martin] did is he didn’t just build a story… he built a world,” they told UFC Unfilted Podcast.
“”[There are] so many characters and such a rich detailed history behind it that there are a lot of different ways you could go with it.”
Who do you think would work best in a spin-off show? We’re thinking Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth, surely… and Tyrion Lannister should have his own chat show.
The final seventh season is set to be split into two halves, with seven episodes coming first, and an unknown number to follow.
The delay in the show’s return is because producers have been controlled by a change in the weather required by the narrative. As fans will be well aware, winter has now come, which meant everyone had to wait for it to be slightly colder in Ireland where the show is made.