Game of Thrones‘ George R.R. Martin Weighs In on Prequel Pilot, Says Another Spinoff Concept Is ‘Shelved’
If Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin has his way, the drama’s recently ordered spinoff pilot will be called The Long Night.
HBO greenlit the officially as-yet-untitled pilot — one of five prequel concepts in the running to carry on theThrones mantle after the original series ends in 2019 — on Friday. The fantasy author commented on the potential spinoff on his personal blog Monday.
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“My vote would be The Long Night, which says it all,” Martin wrote, referring to the prequel’s era, which is thousands of years before the events of the HBO series based on Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels.
But the scribe admitted that his desires probably wouldn’t shake out. “More likely HBO will want to work the phrase Game of Thrones in there somewhere,” he wrote. “We’ll know sooner or later.”
In the Thrones universe, “the Long Night” refers to an epoch in which night lasted a generation, Westeros was decimated and the White Walkers rose to power.
Last May, HBO announced that it had deals with four writers — Carly Wray (Mad Men), Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class), Brian Helgeland (Mystic River) and Max Borenstein (Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island) — to “explore different time periods of [George R.R. Martin]’s vast and rich universe.” It was later confirmed that Thrones co-executive producer Bryan Cogman was working on a fifth idea.
Goldman’s concept was chosen for production first. She and Thrones author George R.R. Martin will executive-produce, along with Vince Gerardis (Game of Thrones) and Daniel Zelman (Bloodline). Goldman also will serve as showrunner.
Per the ordered pilot’s official logline, “the series chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend… it’s not the story we think we know.”
In his blog post, Martin also confirmed that one of the concepts had been “shelved… but that does not mean the others are dead.” (A rep for HBO says no decisions have been made about the other possible series.) He added: “Everything I am told indicates that we could film at least one more pilot, and maybe more than one, in the years to come. We do have an entire world and tens of thousands of years of history to play with, after all. But this is television, so nothing is certain.”
How bout GRRM stop writing blog posts till he finishes his darn book.
Amen! You can’t tell us things are different in the book and NOT GIVE US THE BOOK. It infuriates me. Yes the show is its own medium but it only exists because of the books. It’s wrong to just….stop this close to the end.
I’m fairly sure there will be no more books at this point.
“…night lasted a generation…” So all plantlife died and all animal life followed?
The long night sounds so depressing. Interesting but depressing. I’d still watch it to see what it’s all about. I’m sure they would do a good job in production.
It’s likely only one will become a series even if there are two or three pilots filmed. I don’t see four pilots though.
How can you do a series in which it’s always night? I would think that the production difficulties would be enormous since obviously you can’t have electric lights in Westeros. I have to agree with others that it’s unlikely that GRRM will ever finish the series. I think he enjoys too much giving the finger to fans who are after him to do what he said he was going to do. Plus, he may be waiting to see the last season and so he can crib from what the tv writers came up with. They’ve definitely been hitting on all cylinders with the episodes compared to the last few GoT books by GRRM.
Martin will never finish the book series because the TV series has gone far beyond the written series of books. Anything that he wrote that didn’t match the TV series would be ripped to shreds by fans. “Game Of Thrones: Tonight’s The Night”