All Series Must Die (Which Is Why There Are New Ones) -- The Game of Thrones Series Spinoffs

Talk about going all in:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/hbo-and-george-r-r-martin-are-developing-four-game-of-1794928697

While we’ve known for awhile that there was a possibility of a prequel series, this is a lot more of a commitment than we’d previously heard. According to IGN, David Benioff and David Weiss will be on board all four of the projects, with George R.R. Martin helping to write two of them. Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and Carly Wray (The Leftovers) each have a project with him. The other two shows will be written by Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island) and Brian Helgeland (LA: Confidential).

At this point I am now fully convinced he won't bother finishing the book series.

seems a good bet

Tales from the Stoneheart
Sewing with Sansa
Cleganebowl annual events
Fear the Game of Thrones

too bad ian mcshane is busy at the moment

please let someone interesting get to do the music for at least one of these.

(NB djawadi has improved over time but still)

Seems like the only memorable thing he did was the main theme.

The Light of the Seven, the piece that was playing under Cersei's grand plan in the beginning of the most recent season finale, is pretty cool.

https://youtu.be/pS-gbqbVd8c

Is there going to be a Sand Snakes spinoff on TNT?

thats the sound of a thousand fantasy writers re-purposing their nerdy ass shit to be used as GoT spinoff material

And then after a season or two they all team up in Game of Thrones Defenders and beat up Finn Jones one more time.

Oh I'm sorry -- five, not four.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/536859.html

I kinda love how he goes into deep detail on all this and then at the bottom in a bigger font size and all caps goes

I AM STILL WORKING ON WINDS OF WINTER

No doubt.

And as for how many of these will come to fruition:

Some of the reports of these developments seem to suggest that HBO might be adding four successor shows to the schedule to replace GAME OF THRONES. Decades of experience in television and film have taught me that nothing is ever really certain... but I do think it's very unlikely that we'll be getting four (or five) series. At least not immediately. What we do have here is an order for four -- now five -- pilot scripts. How many pilots will be filmed, and how many series might come out of that, remains to be seen. (If we do get five series on the air, I might have to change my name to Dick Direwolf).

Some stuff

https://grrm.livejournal.com/550336.html

bryan seems like a hardworking, productive guy. how is he at writing books?

after last season, I am about as excited about seeing a game of thrones spinoff season as i am to see the next star wars movie

um yesssss

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbkxnp/hbos-game-of-thrones-prequel-the-long-night-george-rr-martin-vgtrn

GRRM:

Yes, this is a prequel, not a sequel. None of the characters or actors from GAME OF THRONES will appear in the new show. All of the successor shows we’ve been developing have been prequels, as I have mentioned before. This one really puts the PRE in prequel, since it is set not ninety years before GAME OF THRONES (like Dunk & Egg), or a few hundred years, but rather ten thousand years (well, assuming the oral histories of the First Men are accurate, but there are maesters at the Citadel who insist it has only been half that long). We’re very early in the process, of course, with the pilot order just in, so we don’t have a director yet, or a cast, or a location, or even a title. (My vote would be THE LONG NIGHT, which says it all, but I’d be surprised if that’s where we end up. More likely HBO will want to work the phrase “game of thrones” in there somewhere. We’ll know sooner or later)

dunno, but this sounds badass to me

"Thousands of years ago, there came a night that lasted a generation," Old Nan explained to Bran back in GoT's first season. "Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts. And women smothered their babies rather than see them starve, and wept, and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks... In that darkness, the White Walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders, big as hounds."

Jane Goldman as showrunner is...not promising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNwwt25mheo

i guess the dragons are still rendering

matt smith? being scary? i always find that so unnerving because he seems like the kind of non-threatening doofus who furiously resents being a non-threatening doofus and then blows up a town.

I mean, without real time source material to contend with, this might be solid.

The source material was basically what made GoT good, though.

this does have source material—it’s based off the biggest section martin’s fire and blood, which is a history of the targaryen family, plus a few short stories that go into more detail, like “the princess and the queen”

Oh right, it might be good then.

My point was more about the “real time” descriptor, meaning they won’t be outpacing them source material during the run and have to scramble to tie shit together. Okay

lol stupid phone added the stray “Okay”

Yes, if based on completed GRRM material it probably will be decent (though of course I've personally yet to see evidence that he can conclude an epic fantasy story in a satisfying manner).

the story they're planning to tell here def has an ending, and a bit of a scouring of the shire-style epilogue which i doubt they'll include

Really enjoyed the first episode of House of the Dragon. Definitely up for lots more political machinations in this world. The young girl Targaryen was very good and Matt Smith looks like he's having (and will be) lots of fun.

Pretty wild - if not surprising - that the original show has finished and we now have the spin off and still no new book has been published.

forgot about this thread. there was a little discussion about it on the "but is it on netflix" thread. fully expect this spinoff series to end before the next book arrives

i'm debating about whether i should go back and read fire & blood again or just let the series surprise me. idk if i can resist lol

Rhaenyra looks eerily like John Mulaney imo? Am I crazy?

Thought the first episode was entertaining enough. I hope they find ways to broaden the sense of the world beyond just the inner turmoil of the Targaryens. My favorite thing about the GOT books and HBO series was the way the world kept getting bigger throughout them. So I hope we get scenes in the free cities and so forth.

xp i will never unsee that lol

I sort of got Elrond of Rivendell vibes from Rhaenyra.

Just watched E2 and am enjoying very much. Most of my friends are still riding high on the whole “game of thrones sucks now” vibes from the end of the series - so feel like I’m going this alone

i found the first ep reprehensibly gratuitous in its sex, violence and exposition. like if an AI was fed all the episodes and told to make a spin off.

Ha! Much less of it in e2. But the weird sad orgy in e1 did feel very unnecessary. Like they thought people would complain if there wasn’t an ott brothel scene.
The violence was just right tho, imho

Yeah I was a bit put off by the half assed tavern orgy scene and the various gory bludgeonings, like OK we get it, you're reminding us what this show was all about before it went all Iceman Cometh.

what i ultimately liked about GoT at its best was how lore was told through plot, how battles became epic iliad-esque dips into hell, where the quiet moments presented opportunities for exploring character development and not chances to be even freakier, how the shifts in locale and different storylines gave natural narrative gear shifting. The sadism and tits were to be endured more than celebrated. Now its like everybody's joffrey. WTF would i wanna watch that for.
but of course i'll probably watch the 2nd ep. I'm a tv masochist.

there's no gore or sex in episode two so don't worry

there is the possibility of an incendiary incident – but let's not spoil things.

I'm not squeamish! It's just kinda boring and predictable.
I'll watch ep 2 before I complain too much more but the telegraphing of the story direction (and eventual red herrings) are coming fast and furious in episode 1. Gosh, i wonder if those cuts the king is getting on the iron throne might be a more serious problem than they appear?

i feel like that's not supposed to be a surprise? they've made it pretty obvious, as they literally talked about the gash on his back that isn't healing.

this first season is gonna be unlike anything else that has ever aired on tv. from what i can tell, this season is gonna cover roughly 30 years of westerosi history, and they can't really compress the timeline because there are characters who factor heavily into the coming conflict who haven't even been born yet lol

xp, of course; i'm just using that as an example. The birthing murder scene was also obvious from 80 feet away. Every character's presumed arc is being played to the rafters right now to the point where bad guys are twirling mustaches "but they aren't really BAD so much as they are machiavellian do you see"
Wake me when there's an interesting conversation.

xp

yes, I was browsing The World of Ice & Fire last night while I was watching this and counted 12 Targaryen kings between this one and Robert, so this series has quite a lot of ground to cover.

Is that their intention? How many season is this supposed to be?

they're planning to cover a period of history called "the dance of the dragons." i won't elaborate or spoil, but the period they're looking to cover is about three decades, not the 20 or so decades until robert's rebellion.

yeah I assume there will be yet another proposed series after this one that fills in some of the gaps. I had thought we'd see the mad king in this series but we are way way way early for that.

And the new bad guy of the season. Coincidently just rewatched an SNL skit from a few years back called House of Blonde Dragon People and it’s orettt dumb but also pretty OTM about how everybody has the same name and manages to get in a cheap bug also OTM dig at HBO now go max.

how are people finding the rest of this? is p good i guess tho can't lie, i still think 'who is this' quite a lot. i feel like quite a bit more than game of thrones there are a lot of minor characters that have little screen time but seem to be treated with great importance for an episode or a scene here and there.

upthread i said this and the most recent episode kinda made me feel we're heading back here: wonder how they'll manage to move things back to the customary eight episodes of people frowning and grunting before the next big battle scene.

I’ve been really into this season but have to watch a half hour YouTube explainer after every episode. Like what am I supposed to know about that woman with the bow and arrow and eye makeup?

But there are a lot of things I like about this. I like Christian Cole’s arc in this season. Just classic game of thrones major character not amounting to anything in an epic style.

And ormond and Gawain show is good. I like Gawain even more because of his performance in the Great.

i am enjoying this as much as I enjoyed most of GOT. I do like this predicament rhaenyra is now in, where she has what she wanted and is probably a good person but the job fucking sucks and she is no good at it.

I’ve been really into this season but have to watch a half hour YouTube explainer after every episode.

exact same, except i read like three recaps rather than watching a youtube.

feel like rhae has slowly changed into a tyrant with no real reason why apart from 'job is hard' but i guess we need that arc.

“what would you have me do?!”

Yeah I usually listen to the House of R deep-dive but lately even that gets too nerdy for me sometimes

Like I need a for dummies video version with a chart & faces & someone pointing going
THIS GUY has THIS NAME and he was barely mentioned FIVE EPISODES AGO because X REASON

feel like they've really fucked all the seasnake stuff. none of them have had much agency in events throughout, or particularly good storylines, but now it's even more fragmented and worse.

xpost the end of this episode it just had a big sinister wash of music and afaik i've never seen that character before, or i could have in this episode but it's someone who didn't say anything.

they're trying to handle as many characters as the simpsons or the sopranos or something with about a tenth of the number of episodes.

I've gotten into Alt Shift X this season and Shifty's post-show analysis streams have been really great and helpful. They are 3 hours long though ;-). He'll scrub through the footage to land on stills of whatever character or thing he's talking about instead of just talking so it's easier for me to follow than House of R on the whole.

I think House of R goes too deep for me but I like Talk the Thrones, which is on the same podcast feed, and is Mal & Jo from House of R but moderated by Chris Ryan, who doesn’t know as much as them to he makes them dial it down a little. It’s a lot more digestible.

Yeah agree w that

I do enjoy Mal & Jo together so i usually still listen to the deep dives anyway even if I barely can follow it lol

I like them a lot too!

Not to be all Ringer-pilled but the Midnight Boys HOTD recaps are good too - bit more of a chaotic vibe obv <3 but they are v good at boiling some of the confusing stuff down & when they get around to letting Jomi talk about the contextual stuff he’s so good

Haha VG you and I have the same podcast diet

:D

I've found Joe Magician surprisingly insightful for HotD

solid episode overall, my favorite part was sunfyre's new harvey dent look

Yeah this was a good ep! Lots of things popping off

i like how aemond in this episode is like "tongue-kissing my mom a few weeks ago was really cool but whoa not sure about us having sex, that was a weird dream"

creepy quasi-love triangle. i assume aemond is gonna be okay tho or saved by his witchy gf.

dragon fight was funny, partly impressive then at other times looks like they're all badly riding horses.

the CGI of dragons is really great until you can see the rider and the rider looks like a little fake person or something, I don't know why they can't pull that off.

I still hate the design of some of the dragons, especially the one with weird elongate necks and body! Also idg only back legs but no front legs

They all look like trogdor drawings to me lol

Yeah they are sort of small with massive heads.

Also the saddles do look kind of ridiculous. I guess you can't have someone riding a dragon and keep things entirely serious.

dreamfyre is a beautiful reindeer and I would die to defend her

I still can barely tell the difference between all of these dang dragons unless their names are spoken

Except sheepstealer who goes HARD

Maybe vhagar (sp?) too but idk if I could pick it out of a lineup

Haha yeah I think I said upthread it feels very right that this show has managed to make you go "wait which one is this" about dragons.

Sheepstealer is quite a cute name for a dragon even though we know what it does to those poor sheep.

I always think of Vhagar as "Big Honker"

House of R mentioned that Sunfire looks kind of like Aegon with it’s half burned face ie owners resembling pets

They should give Vhagar an eyepatch lol

Aemond is so disturbing. I was trying to think of why he's so creepy and I decided it's like if Boris Johnson was in the British band Towers Of London.

that IS disturbing

this has been my favorite season of anything GoT related in quite a long time

helpful chart on the size of the dragons - in case it wasn't clear why it was so hard for three dragons to take down one Sheepstealer.

https://i.redd.it/2j5ge3ebbnv91.png

decent finale but something very gross about the show introducing the concept of using children as human shields, like we haven’t seen that being used as an excuse to commit genocide for the past three years

I enjoyed the finale but yeah, the added “garnish” more than a little grim & unnecessary

whenever the show references the “Prince Who Was Promised” my brain immediately shoots off into The Court Jester w Danny Kaye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ9f2rnjB84

I love that this loathsome story has been greenlit for four seasons of expensive television

I mean, right?

I think this show is actually engaging with some pretty interesting and relevant themes. It's slight by comparison but you could fit it into an argument with like Andor and Chernobyl.

I enjoy the show but it got too hamstrung by the source material - they’ve been forced to weave narrative in and around a lot of pre-existing beats on a timeline - they don’t get to spend long enough with their best characters to really draw out the themes, they’re constantly flitting from one beat to the next

I’m not saying it’s not good, I just think there’s a self-imposed ceiling on ~how~ good it can be.

I think that’s why it’s always a little unsatisfying for me, even when it’s good

VG I agree with that take. It’s one of my favorite shows going and this might have been its best season, and at the same time they spent too much time following too many characters, ultimately giving short shrift to just about all of them.

that's why it helps that every actor is so fantastic, can give these bit parts some meat. like tommy flanagan, freddie fox, james norton, all were so great this year. and of course emma d'arcy is probably going to win a deserved emmy

every season there’s always one scene where I say “love a good Matt Smith speech”

VG and pgwp otm. I think it would have been a thematically stronger show had they stuck to it being primarily about the rivalry between Rhaenyra and Alicent - their relationship is by far the most complex and interesting imo. otoh I get it, TV stan culture being the cesspit it is - focus too much on two women and the ghouls will all start complaining about it being too woke

is it chuddish or woke to be cheering for Aegon now? on the one hand he was a spoiled little puke of a kid and stepped over his sister for the throne. on the other hand he's overcome a disability (being melted), kicked his addiction, got a real job for a bit and is now hobbling around the seven kingdoms on his also melted, hobbly dragon kicking peoples asses into gear.

And Tom Glynn-Carney is killing it. I’m kinda cheering for the little fucker in his Richard III mode

He was reminding me a lot of Michael Pitt in recent episodes

To be honest both or the brothers are kinda antiheroes at this point.

i've grown to like one-eyed metal brother, sprinting around the ruins in his black skinny jeans his haunted goth witch girlfriend

is this turning into the crush of shame thread?!

Loved Ulf deciding 'fuck all of you' and setting his dragon on both sides. I imagine this dude's losing his head next season.

We’re living out loud!