Robert’s Rebellion will not be part of the new series being developed, but could legendary swordsman Ser Arthur Dayne — portrayed by Luke Roberts in season 6 — still play a part? (HBO)
A fifth pilot script is in the works for the Game of Thrones “successor” shows HBO is developing, George R.R. Martin announced in a blog post on Sunday.
“I don’t especially like the term ‘spinoff,’ and I don’t think it really applies to these new projects. What we’re talking about are new stories set in the ‘secondary universe’ (to borrow Tolkien’s term) of Westeros and the world beyond, the world I created for A Song of Ice and Fire,” said the the author of the fantasy book series upon which the spectacularly successful TV show is based.
Martin also dispelled rumors that two of the plot lines would cover his Dunk and Egg novellas, a series of tales about the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and Aegon the Unlikely, and the battles that kicked off the war between the kingdoms known as Robert’s Rebellion.
“We’re not doing Dunk & Egg. Eventually, sure, I’d love that, and so would many of you. But I’ve only written and published three novellas to date, and there are at least seven or eight or 10 more I want to write. We all know how slow I am, and how fast a television show can move. I don’t want to repeat what happened with Game of Thrones itself, where the show gets ahead of the books. When the day comes that I’ve finished telling all my tales of Dunk & Egg, then we’ll do a TV show about them… but that day is still a long ways off,” he wrote.
“We’re not doing Robert’s Rebellion either. I know thousands of you want that, I know there’s a petition,” he continued, “but by the time I finish writing A Song of Ice and Fire, you will know every important thing that happened in Robert’s Rebellion. There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know. That’s not a story I want to tell just now; it would feel too much like a twice-told tale.”
In addition to previously announced “successor” scripts from Max Borenstein, Jane Goldman, Brian Helgeland, and Carly Wray, a fifth is in development by a writer whose name Martin declined to disclose: “No, I will not reveal the name here. HBO announced the names of the first four, and will no doubt announce the fifth as well, once his deal has closed. He’s a really terrific addition, however, a great guy and a fine writer, and aside from me and maybe Elio (M. Garcia Jr.) and Linda (Antonsson), I don’t know anyone who knows and loves Westeros as well as he does.
“None of these new shows will be ‘spinning off’ from GOT in the traditional sense,” Martin wrote. “We are not talking Joey or AfterMASH or even Frazier or Lou Grant, where characters from one show continue on to another. So all of you who were hoping for the further adventures of Hot Pie are doomed to disappointment. Every one of the concepts under discussion is a prequel, rather than a sequel. Some may not even be set on Westeros. Rather than ‘spinoff’ or ‘prequel,’ however, I prefer the term ‘successor show.’ That’s what I’ve been calling them.”
Game of Thrones showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff will serve as executive producers on any of the shows that HBO orders, but are not currently attached to write on the new series.
Read Martin’s full post on his “Not a Blog.”
Game of Thrones returns for season 7 on July 16 on HBO.
