HBO adds another Game Of Thrones spin-off to the pile

Producing House Of The Dragon was a pain to begin with.

HBO reportedly made numerous attempts to expand Westeros, hoping to develop George R.R. Martin’s World of Ice and Fire into multiple spin-offs. At one point, the network spent $30 million on a pilot starring Naomi Watts and, in an act of Ramsay Boltonian cruelty, never aired it. On the one hand, that’s what pilots are for. On the other, release that episode. However, after a decade of development, HBO got House Of The Dragon, which more or less satisfied everyone’s desire for more extreme violence, incomprehensible cinematography, and computer-generated dragons. But that’s not all. Several other spin-offs have been reported in the years since, including A Jon Snow sequel series, ‌A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight (which was actually greenlit), Ten Thousand Ships (another prequel), a show about the Sea Snake, and The Golden Empire, one of several animated GOT shows in development. Now HBO is adding another.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Mattson Tomlin, co-writer of The Batman Part II and an adaptation of Mega Man, is hard at work on a House Of The Dragon prequel based on Aegon’s Conquest, one of A Song Of Ice And Fire’s foundational histories. It follows Aegon Targaryen as he conquers Westeros and unifies six of the Seven Kingdoms—Dorne being the only holdout—which sets up the events of House Of The Dragon and Game Of Thrones and begins the lines that would conclude with Bran the Broken and maybe a Jon Snow spin-off.

Described as a “back-to-basics” approach to the wildly complicated mythos, the show faces an uphill climb, considering how many Thrones projects HBO begins and abandons. Again, that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a warning to anyone dying to see Aegon Torrhen Stark kneel to Aegon: Don’t hold your fire breath.