HBO, Kit Harington developing a Game Of Thrones follow-up focused on Jon Snow

Harington is attached to star in the series, the first potential Thrones spinoff that would take place after the show's finale

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HBO, Kit Harington developing a Game Of Thrones follow-up focused on Jon Snow
Kit Harington Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for SOLT

Kit Harington is reportedly attached to star in a new spinoff set in the world of Game Of Thrones’ Westeros, THR reports, with a new sequel project, focused on Harington’s Jon Snow, reportedly in development at HBO.

HBO has, of course, been cooking up roughly 8 billion ancillary Thrones projects since the massively successful series went off the air in 2019—with this August’s House Of The Dragon just the first to make it past the conceptual stage and out into the real world. But almost all of those projects have focused on the considerable backstory that author George R.R. Martin has concocted for his fantasy world; the Jon Snow show is unique in being an explicit follow-up to the controversial Thrones finale, in which he was exiled beyond the Wall for committing regicide against his increasingly megalomaniacal girlfriend-aunt.

Given that Thrones already ended up going well beyond the material Martin has published in A Song Of Ice And Fire (“The Winds Of Winter: Out sometime around the heat death of the universe!”), it’s wild to imagine the TV franchise pushing even further into Westeros’ future. And yet, that does seem to be the aim—possibly because HBO suddenly realized it’d left a few beloved characters unmurdered that it could now come back for. (Watch your back, Brienne.)

Harington’s Snow is, roughly, the closest thing Game Of Thrones had to a fantasy hero, a noble soldier frequently torn between his vows, his morality, and his unfailing attraction to the most dangerous woman in any given room. We’re actually a bit surprised Harington has signed on for the follow-up project; he’s been making inroads to the Marvel Cinematic Universe of late (courtesy of Eternals), a gig that doesn’t usually include time for the grueling commitments imposed by Thrones’ shooting schedules. Meanwhile, THR declines to say who’ll be handling creative duties on the prospective Snow series (now one of 7 Thrones spinoffs in the work), especially since the original show’s D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have been functionally M.I.A. since about five seconds after the show’s finale aired.

97 Comments

  • captain-splendid-av says:
  • radio-eris-av says:

    Initial reaction: Oh god, no.Subsequent thought: Who asked for this? No one wants this.

  • ohnoray-av says:

    take us back to when he died. the last few seasons were his comatose odyssey and now we get the proper show when he awakes.

    • fanburner-av says:

      I can see it now as a great excuse to bring back the other cast. Jon Snow Noir, as he spends a season dreaming he’s a 1940s private eye, with Dany as the sultry lounge singer/spy, Littlefinger as the nightclub owner, Arya and the Hound as the cops on the take. Then the next season, Jon’s on a tropical island in the 30s where he and Sansa run a sightseeing business and have run ins with Nazis Cersei and Jamie. Final season: Jon Snow 1999: the GoT cast in space! Ned Stark is a sentient cloud computer! Joffrey is an android! Fun for all!

      • hypermark-av says:

        “Jon’s on a tropical island in the 30s where he and Sansa run a sightseeing business and have run ins with Nazis Cersei and Jamie.”And Tyrion plays the wise-cracking parrot, Crackers!

      • sassyskeleton-av says:

        I’m in

      • recognitions-av says:

        Depends on who’s running it. If it’s Benioff and Weiss again, I think Clarke would rather be boiled alive than go back working for them again.

  • electricsheep198-av says:

    I have no interest in the Targaryen prequel but this one I might actually check out.  Might.

    • teageegeepea-av says:

      I know the source material for that prequel isn’t great, but I really don’t know what more they’d do with this. The Wall is gone, the White Walkers are gone, the wildling characters Jon Snow knew mostly died, and he was never one of the most compelling characters in the show (related to him being the most bog-standard fantasy protagonist and rather mopey).

  • lobster9-av says:

    Never gonna happen. That dragon spinoffs gonna kill the whole franchise dead.

    • surprise-surprise-av says:

      Despite the overwhelming anger over that final season, Game of Thrones is still apparently one of HBO Max’s most streamed shows. I really don’t think that final season was the nail in the coffin people think it was.

      • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

        I’ve been saying this for awhile but a lot of the people here just don’t want to fathom it because they didn’t like S8.It’s pretty much been the most streamed show on HBOMax since it launched, a year after the finale. New stuff comes on, peaks for awhile, and GOT quietly moves back to the top once the newness wears off. You add to that that it’s always near the top of the iTunes best sellers list, I mean look if 25% of the final season audience watch House of Dragons, it will still be one of the biggest shows on TV currently. The IPs was never dead, the speed at which we move through the zeitgeist has picked up in the last decade.

        • surprise-surprise-av says:

          And let’s say hypothetically thatHouse of the Dragon does bomb spectacularly (I don’t think it will but let’s just say it does) there’s still massive difference in a series set two hundred years before Game of Thrones and a direct sequel to the series featuring (at least one) of the cast’s main characters.

          Even among us (us being people who care enough about film and television to have conversations about them with complete strangers on the internet) I think there’s a general consensus that the showrunners are the ones who dropped the ball that last season in their rush to do a Star Wars (and ironically the poor reception of that final season led to them losing whatever Star Wars project they were approached for – personally I think it’s The Acolyte thing).

          • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

            First, the Star Wars thing was nonsense. They didn’t rush to go to Star Wars. They got Star Wars because they announced that they were finishing GOT. If you look at the timeline of where Star Wars was when they announced that GOT was ending,more people would realize at that point, That it just doesn’t add up. When they announced the final two seasons, Star Wars hadn’t even finished Solo, we’re still making a movie by Trank, and Rian Johnson had been announced for 8 and writing 9. It just doesn’t work. Yes, they might have been biting off more than they could chew in making S8, doing all the behind the scenes ancillary stuff for S8, and working on Star Wars, but they didn’t rush for Star Wars.But back to your main point, Dexter New Blood just came back and did absolutely fine. Was even received pretty well after a pretty toxically received final few seasons and finale. The fact GOT is still one of the most popular shows on HBOMAX (if not the most) tells there’s still an audience and chances are people are finding it without the toxicity of the cultural conversation. It’s going to do fine. It won’t be S8 big. Anyone who thinks that is a moron. It won’t be a cultural monolith unless it’s great. But it’s going to do fine. Dexter shows that despite how loud people are, there will always be an audience of something that liked and will come back. GOT audience was massive, it doesn’t need all of it to come back.

  • liebkartoffel-av says:

    But…why?

    • mdiller64-av says:

      Why? Because Game of Thrones was the last big success to come out of HBO and they don’t have any better ideas.

      • bustertaco-av says:

        You can’t be serious. HBO, the network that makes Sucession, Peacemaker, Euphoria, Barry, Westworld, Harley Quinn, Righteous Gemstones, Watchmen, White Lotus and We Own This City hasn’t had a big success since GoT? That there’s no better ideas?

        • darrylarchideld-av says:

          I get it, I also feel this way about HBO’s slate of shows. But my understanding is that Game of Thrones was HUGE for them. The shows you’re listing are critically well-received and do well enough to justify their existence, but Game of Thrones was a genuine cultural event.Nobody named their children after Westworld characters, got tattoos referencing Waystar-Royco. GoT was a pretty historically huge deal for a television drama. (And it’s a real testament to how badly it ended that people have forgotten that.)

          • alferd-packer-av says:

            You must know at least one Clementine Pennyfeather!

          • bustertaco-av says:

            Dude, that’s ridiculous. Game of Thrones was the most watched show in history, of course these shows are small potatoes compared to it. Literally no show was as popular as Game of Thrones.I really don’t know what to say, or what point any of yall are trying to make. That the listed shows aren’t as popular as the most popular television show in existence? Well, duh. But that’s an absurd standard to hold any tv show to.

          • darrylarchideld-av says:

            Maybe re-read what people are saying? The question was, “why make more GoT?” And everyone here including yourself seems to agree on the answer: because nothing else HBO has done compares to the historic popularity of GoT.I’m not disparaging Westworld or Succession, which are good shows that I like. But HBO wants a new flagship, something as big as GoT was, and that’s a tall order. His Dark Materials was probably an attempt at getting lightning to strike again, and it failed. So, they’re going back to the well for more GoT.

        • captain-splendid-av says:

          The GoT merch numbers are probably bigger than all those shows you listed combined.

        • junker359-av says:

          Those are all good shows but none of them have the cultural cachet of GoT. 

        • dacostabr-av says:

          Most of those shows are very popular indeed with white people in the US’ East and West coast.GoT was popular around the world.

          • afton81-av says:

            Agreed. I’m from Canada and honestly, the only show out of that list that I’ve heard anyone talk about was Euphoria. I watched The Righteous Gemstones because it was recommended to me by an American friend (thankfully). No one I know has even heard of Succession, let alone watched it. GOT? Every person I know was/is obsessed with it. So, yeah, much bigger impact globally.

  • mdiller64-av says:

    he’s been making inroads to the Marvel Cinematic Universe of late (courtesy of Eternals)I know that Marvel loves their sequels, but I can’t imagine anyone is all that enthusiastic about putting Eternals 2 on the release calendar. They might just let it slip off the radar and hope we all forget it was ever a thing. (I am, for the record, not an Eternals movie hater. I saw it in the theater and it was fine – some nice elements but not really memorable. In retrospect I think it made the same mistake as some of the recent DC films – when you try to introduce several characters at once, you end up not spending enough time with anyone and, as a result, you have a story without any real stakes that just feels kind of meh. Hopefully Marvel learned from their mistake and will not duplicate it when the first X-Men movie hits.)

    • surprise-surprise-av says:

      I mean – despite the middling reviews – Eternals didn’t do too bad at the box office* and that’s all that really matters to Disney. Plus, Eternals 2 is the one with Harry Styles, so that’s going to bode well for Disney.

      With that said, Kit’s character was just introduced in Eternals, he didn’t really play a massive role and the post-credit scene where he’s approached by Blade is clearly setting up some kind of Dark Avengers/Midnight Sons team-up (likely with Moon Knight and Werewolf by Night). *It was the second worst performing MCU movie but the worst performing MCU made under $200 million where Eternals made half a billion.

    • cura-te-ipsum-av says:

      Maybe they can Thor 3 Eternals 2.

      • maulkeating-av says:

        Should I hate myself for understanding this sentence?

        • cura-te-ipsum-av says:

          We’re Australians. Hating ourselves is a national pastime.

          • ruefulcountenance-av says:

            I thought that was hating the British?But you know, in a very friendly and cheerful way.

          • cura-te-ipsum-av says:

            We’re allowed to have more than one national pastime. Throwback to the days when we needed a backup incase the footy was washed out and the pub was out of beer.

          • ruefulcountenance-av says:

            Just for clarity, when you say “footy” you mean the unruly, violent, elbow-to-the-face variety, correct?

          • cura-te-ipsum-av says:

            All four codes are like that so you’re going to have to be more specific.

          • ruefulcountenance-av says:

            I mean what we in Britain refer to as “Rules” rather than association football.In the UK people sometimes refer to association football as “footy” but it seems to be a lot rarer than Australians saying “footy” to mean Rules. I tend to assume that if an Aussie says “Footy” they mean Rules but I can’t remember is association is more known as “soccer” or “football” over there.

          • uselessbeauty1987-av says:

            It’s when we bring knifey-spoony out and indulge in such key debates as Holden vs Ford, AFL vs NRL and why John Howard is a huge, huge prick.

    • thelincolncut-av says:

      Actually, the Eternals references in this week’s Ms. Marvel show that no, they aren’t going to forget it, so you can go back to crying.

    • rev-skarekroe-av says:

      Eternals set up too many threads to just ignore, but it didn’t exactly set the world on fire either.
      Maybe they’ll make a D+ movie out of the sequel.

    • turbotastic-av says:

      “They won’t make a sequel because I didn’t like it” is the most common of all incorrect movie takes.

    • badkuchikopi-av says:

      They could just make a movie called Celestials that continues where Eternals left off.

    • cosmicghostrider-av says:

      Are you aware of The Midnight Sons? It seems like that is happening. A team with Black Knight (Kit Harington) and Blade, Moon Knight, etc.
      it’s a supernatural version of the Avengers.

  • bigbydub-av says:

    You’ve got a bad ass, face changing adolescent female assassin plotting a course for high seas adventures in the uncharted realms some of which may be tropical so possibly tits, or this mopey fuck hunting polar bears during a blizzard in Winter and nipples that could easily poke your eye out.   Which to spin off?!

    • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

      When HBO passed on the Long Night because the hardcore book fans flipped over the gender flip Lann The Clever, they made it pretty clear they’re going to play it safe with the IP from here on out.Sending Arya to places unknown with no official description or location from a book? Pass.Bring back Jon Snow and telling a story that keeps him mostly in the far north or (fan wanking here: sends him to Essos to make peace with Dany’s death by finding Drogon or something) that involves places clearly established in the books? Checks cashed.

      • anthonypirtle-av says:

        I can’t speak for other hardcore book fans, but I would have loved an Arya-Explores-Uncharted-Lands show. I would also have been fine with a Long Night show featuring a gender-flipped Laan. I never even heard they were considering that.But I don’t doubt there would have been a backlash among a particular subset of the fans. Heck, I’m watching something similar going on with Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show, with people freaking out over it featuring a black elf.

        • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

          I’d agree that the Arya show would have more potential, cause it could do whatever it wants.Which is not what the hardcore of the hardcore want. They just want the books, which is why House of Dragons went to series and not the Long Night.

      • soveryboreddd-av says:

        Hopefully we see more of Ghost. The wolf’s screen time was seriously lacking. I much rather have seen more of him then those dragons. 

        • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

          The Ghost problem, from what I’ve read, is always that the wolves were more expensive because it’s harder to pass the eye test because people know what wolves look like. You can tell when it’s bad CGI.Whereas the dragons are fake and you can get away with more. So the wolves end up being more expensive than the dragons.

      • badkuchikopi-av says:

        When HBO passed on the Long Night because the hardcore book fans flipped over the gender flip Lann The Clever

        Did this actually happen? Doesn’t seem like a real reason to not pick up a pilot. And then someone from HBO admitted it?

        • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

          I doubt that’s something that’ll be confirmed, though I do vaguely remember someone did an in-depth article or maybe podcast about the pilot.But the timeline matches. HBO was all in on it, big name cast, big writer, think GRRM was working on stuff for it. Then that leaks and it becomes clear the show is kinda going to subvert lore. Internet backlashed and suddenly HBO passed on the pilot even though it seemed all but a lock.

          • badkuchikopi-av says:

            Huh, I was unaware of that. I’m a pretty big ASOIAF book nerd and I can’t imagine giving a shit what gender the first Lannister was. Like that’s not even a character it’s a legendary person who may or may not have existed.

          • tormentedthoughts3rd-av says:

            I won’t disparage the whole community. I don’t think most people cared. And it fits in the universe with what is known about that legend.But, internet going to internet. And it’s not hard to get a small brigade of to appear larger than they are to torpedo something because it’s not what they wanted.

    • chronoboy-av says:

      You had me at “nipples that could easily poke your eye out.” 

    • bigal6ft6-av says:

      Arya’s ending seemed the most Spin-off bait, especially with her unexplored “What’s West of Westeros?” line which is hanging right there. The other 3 Stark kids seemed rather wrapped up, the North seems kinda dull now that all the White Walkers are gone.

      I’m hoping they kinda just remember the Arya the Explorer spinoff is the way better idea.

      • amazingpotato-av says:

        the North seems kinda dull now that all the White Walkers are goneMaybe this show supposes, “but what if they weren’t?”What a twist!

    • mfolwell-av says:

      To be fair, it’s probably more about which actors are willing to return rather than which story is more compelling.I’m honestly kind of surprised that Harington is interested. I got the impression he was very much done with being unable to cut his hair and having to traipse around in the cold for months on end (which might just mean this show involves Jon getting a buzz cut and heading off to warmer climes).

      • soveryboreddd-av says:

        If Thor can get a haircut so can Jon Snow. Sucks that he went back to that Fabio looking wig for his next appearances. Hemsworth just looks so much better with short hair.

    • katanahottinroof-av says:

      Eh. I was not that interested in Arya. All the perks of being of the nobility but none of the responsibilities.

    • drkschtz-av says:

      Sometimes it’s also about what’s going on in real life. Is Maisie available or even want to do something like that? Maybe not.

    • anthonypirtle-av says:

      This was exactly my first thought. Why would you want to do a spin-off on this gloomy gus when Arya’s supposed to be having actual adventures on the high seas?

    • soveryboreddd-av says:

      This feels like to me he is typecast as Jon Snow and can’t get any different roles. So he decided to go back to what he’s most known for.

    • sethsez-av says:

      Which to spin off?! The one that’s probably cheaper and more reliable to shoot, with the actor most likely to return.

    • recognitions-av says:

      Love talking about women like they’re objects

    • themanagement2-av says:

      Given your obsession with tits, I’m going to assume you were a writer on the original show.

  • drips-av says:

    Yessss let’s go off book. Worked out so well the last time!

  • neanderthalbodyspray-av says:

    Seems like Arya’s story would be far more interesting if they wanted to go the sequel, no?

  • bio-wd-av says:

    Wow.  Is this really the best idea anyone can think of?

  • pie-oh-pah-av says:
  • tyenglishmn-av says:

    Kit, buddy, at least wait for the Marvel payday before you do this

  • maudib-av says:

    Jon Snow can now solve the mysteries of grumkins, snarks, and ice spiders that have haunted fans for years. 

  • jimbjohn-av says:

    Man, maybe I am no longer the target audience, but I cannot imagine who this is for. The normies? It seems like grimdark went out of style so hard after 2016 and the later seasons of GOT limped alone before bricking hard. It boggles my mind that they greenlit House of the Dragon despite no one (that I can tell) seemly wanting it. Or maybe they’ll be huge smashes and it will turn out that I’ve lost all understanding of popular culture. 

  • snagglepluss-av says:

    I am quite sure everyone will be thrilled to spend several months out of the year in Iceland filming scenes taking place in a cold, desolate environment. Maybe he’ll find himself back in Westeros so they could spend some of that time in Northern Ireland instead. Or maybe he can somehow find himself in Dorne so they could all make a nice holiday out of it.

  • anthonypirtle-av says:

    I thought he famously hated playing that role. Oh well, I guess after Eternals flopped, he decided it wasn’t that bad being on a hit show.

  • stormylewis-av says:

    Counter Pitch–A historical drama series about the historical John Snow. 

  • sassyskeleton-av says:

    Why should we care about this?
    This stupid bastard doesn’t know anything.

  • artofwjd-av says:

    Why does Kit Harington always look like he’s about to burst into tears? Is he OK? If a rich and famous actor who looks like that can’t be happy what’s the hope for the rest of us?

  • deb03449a1-av says:

    He should have ended up miserable on the throne he didn’t want.

  • amazingpotato-av says:

    Enough of this nonsense. Where’s my Wall sequel series?

  • shambalor-av says:

    Starring in The Eternals is more of an off ramp than an inroad, isn’t it? Hell, Kumail Nanjiani might as well get fat now if he wants to.

  • kinjacaffeinespider-av says:

    Kit, you’d be pretty if you smiled.

  • soveryboreddd-av says:

    When’s the Ser Pounce and Ghost show going to come out. Why not have one of these sequels be kid friendly. 

  • cosmicghostrider-av says:

    Wait but (I don’t watch Game of Thrones), didn’t Jon Snow die in a season finale at one point? Ugh this show.

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