For the watch: the Jon Snow spinoff is (at least temporarily) dead
Whispers of a Snow-focused Game Of Thrones prequel first hit the Free Cities in 2022
Aux News Jon Snow
And now for some news no one needed a watcher on the wall to foresee: the long-rumored but barely moved-on Jon Snow-themed spinoff is officially dead—at least for the time being. Valar Morghulis.
The news comes from Kit Harrington, who finally spoke about the long-gestating Game Of Thrones sequel with ScreenRant while promoting his upcoming crime thriller, Blood For Dust (which is actually about two cocaine smugglers despite the fact that the title sounds like yet another one of the approximately 875 Thrones spinoffs in itself). “I hadn’t really ever spoken about [the series], because it was in development. I didn’t want it leaked out that it was being developed, and I didn’t want the thing to happen where people kind of start theorizing, getting either excited about it or hating the idea of it, when it may never happen. Because in development, you look at every angle, and you see whether it’s worth it,” Harrington shared.
“And currently, it’s not,” the actor continued. “Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough. So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being.”
Considering Jon got a pretty classic rom-com ending—stabbed his beloved, rode off into the sunset with his bearded buddy to protect the realm against who knows what, completely renouncing his secretive claim to the throne the series had worked so hard to make the axis of everything up until that point—it’s pretty hard to imagine what they could have possibly come up with. But, like the character, what is dead may never really die in the ever-expanding Game Of Thrones universe. “There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf,” Harrington concluded.
In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with some much older Targaryens when House Of The Dragon starts airing its second season June 16. (The HBO series also just shared two competing Team Green and Team Black trailers that you can watch here.) A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight—the only other Thrones prequel this writer has any faith will actually make it to a TV screen—also just announced its first few actors, so there’s actually some movement there, shockingly. But to Jon Snow, we say (for now), “for the watch.”
36 Comments
Sweet now can we actually get bloodmoon. It’s the only spin off I was acvtually excited about, instead we got House of the Dragon which is horribly dull.
“Whispers of a Snow-focused Game Of Thrones prequel first hit the Free Cities in 2022″I assume this is a typo, unless the plan was to give us Jon Snow: The Tween Years.
I understand, from a business sense, why they went balls deep on the spinoffs. But as a fan, or admittedly a “certain kind of fan”, I just find it so boring. The story is done for me. I’m not saying future stories aren’t going to “ruin” it for me or retroactively spoil the joy I got from my first watch. It just seems like a wasted opportunity. I want to see what GRR Martin and D&D can do in a different sandbox. I was way more excited about Three Body Problem and Nightflyers than I was about House of Dragon.
You watched The Expanse? The funniest fucking thing about that is that it was based on an epic novel series based on a tabletop written by George RR Martin’s assistants that they wrote and created and finished all while Martin was still fucking around with Game of Thrones books. Plus, the greatest goddamn politician in science fiction:
I mean, there was basically no chance that any of the spinoffs were going to get within spitting distance of how insanely popular GoT was. But frachises gonna franchise.
What I don’t understand is in a world where GRR Martin is a household name, superheroes movies have dominated the big and small screen and even dark superhero takes have found success, How the hell have we not gotten a Wild Cards adaption yet
S.C.A.R.E. is discreetly discouraging Hollywood from pursuing such an adaptation.
Dune’s success hasn’t spawned a flurry of Frank Herbert adaptations.
YetAnd also Frank Herbert’s non-Dune stuff isn’t that great or well known. Honestly Wild Cards may not be either and it just may be my perception of it being more well known. It’s also not just GRR baby, it’s a collaborative universe with a bunch of big scifi names, which may be why it has not been adapted.
Yeah it might be some sort of rights issue, but Wild Cards seems like such an easy scifi anthology TV series premise. It’s been a long time since I’ve kept up with GRRM’s blog, but I think I remember him talking about optioning it. Nightflyers came and went though, and I honestly think Wild Cards could be a decent medium sized hit and maybe not even cost that much either, at least relative to a lot of other prestige content being churned out.
100%. I can’t bring myself to be interested in any of the spin offs. I watched the show and it’s done now. I can say I enjoyed GoT but on the whole it was just too frustrating a watch to do again. And despite its problems, the story is done and resolved. I don’t need to relive the reign of the Targaryens or anything else.
Ok now hear me out: ‘Snow in School’, a high school dramady in which an adult John Snow has to take time out from ruling the North or whatever the fuck he does at the end to actually GODDAMN LEARN SOMETHING!
*Teacher, preferably played by John Cleese, at front of class* “Go on, Snow! Five times four! Spit it out!”“I- uh-”“YOU KNOW NOTHING, JON SNOW!”
theme song: Knowledge by Operation Ivyi kind of like the idea of a GoT meets Beverly Hills 90210 mashup (altho i guess Riverdale would perhaps be a better point of comparison than BH90210). or maybe a GoT breakfast club thing
Yeah I was thinking Riverdale style.
There’s gotta be a Riverdale in Westeros. It seems like that kind of place.
Jamie and Cerci are already the Blossoms taken to their natural conclusion.
Right?
Isn’t it spelled ‘Harington’? One ‘r’?
Any Harringtons I’ve known have two Rs …maybe it’s an Irish spelling thing though ( a lot of Harringtons over here)
I can understand why it died, what was their hook going to be? Sansa is the one running the north and dealing with the political side of things. The major threat of the walkers is gone. Any magic weirdness is Bran’s territory. The wildlings don’t seem compelling enough to build a show around.
I think they could have told a smaller lower-stakes story about some of the wilder wildlings wanting to return to the status quo now that the walkers are gone. Maybe they kidnap some noblewomen on their way out or something and he’s tasked with leading some young lord north of the wall to rescue them. It probably would only work as a mini-series though, which means less profits for HBO. Plus maybe they were worried it wasn’t Game of Thronesy enough without the dragons and stuff. His warg powers could have made it interesting though.
Exactly. The only spinoff I think I would be interested in would be following Arya around as she explored what’s west of Westeros. That premise is pretty much a blank canvas to do all kinds of interesting things with.
I’d play a Game of Thrones-set video game that focused on what Arya gets up to after the show.
The wildlings don’t seem compelling enough to build a show around.See, you say that…
“Any magic weirdness is Bran’s territory.”True I guess, but Bran was the least interesting character on the show, so if they wanted to let Jon have the magic weirdness no one would complain.
It’s probably for the best. I don’t think anyone cared about a spinoff show featuring the lamest character in GoT played by the 2nd worst actor in the show that everybody ended up hating.
First I was like “2nd worst?!” and then I was like “oh, yeah, the red headed girl”.
When I saw this headline I assume it was Kit Harrington doing an interview from the Burger King he was working at. Surprised he is still in the business.
Who was the first worst?
Emilia Clarke.
what the fuck!!!!!
Jon Snow’s story is finished. He wasn’t all that interesting as a character even when he was a recently resurrected secret heir to the Seven Kingdoms and the Chosen One who would single-handedly defeat the White Walkers.Then it turned out none of that stuff even mattered to the story.Now he’s just some guy living in an empty wilderness with no threats to the north and a stable kingdom ruled by his sister to the south.
Knowledge that this project existed honestly sucked my enthusiasm away from any other GOT spin off. I’m glad its (probably) dead.
I didn’t watch Game of Thrones when it aired, but in the final few seasons I kept hearing people talk about Jon Snow this and Jon Snow that in a way that suggested to me that he was the Main Character. So when I first saw the headlines about a Jon Snow-focused spinoff, I was a little confused because I thought the main show was about him.I’ve since watched the entire show, and a Jon Snow spinoff still doesn’t make any sense to me, other than the actor’s career not really taking off outside of GoT (which in and of itself isn’t surprising to me either; I thought the supporting actors more often than not gave more interesting performances than the leads).
That’s probably fine.