A prequel series to global TV phenomenon Game of Thrones has been ordered, WarnerMedia announced Tuesday, as it set out launch details for its new HBO Max streaming service.
The new show in George RR Martin’s fictional world of Westeros will take place 300 years prior to fantasy epic Thrones and will be called House of the Dragon.
The series will be based on the book Fire and Blood, which tells the story of the murderous, dragon-breeding Targaryen family.
“It’s my pleasure to announce today that we are ordering House of the Dragon straight to series for HBO,” Casey Bloys, president of programming, told a Los Angeles launch event for HBO Max. “It tells the story of House Targaryen and the early days of Westeros.”
Thrones, known for its graphic violence and sex as well as its unprecedented budget and production values, ended its eight-season run earlier this year with 59 Emmys—a record for a drama or comedy at television’s equivalent of the Oscars.
The new prequel has been co-created by Martin and Ryan Condal (Colony), who will write the 10-episode series and serve as showrunner alongside Miguel Sapochnik.
Sapochnik directed multiple Game of Thrones episodes including the Emmy-winning “Battle of the Bastards.”
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Small new story screen holds big appeal for Hollywood A-listers
From Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep to Reese Witherspoon and Michael Douglas, Hollywood movie stars are being lured to television by higher production values, wider opportunities…and massive paydays.
Once the vastly poorer cousin of film, the small screen has enjoyed a stunning renaissance as members of the binge-watching generation swap trips to the multiplex for nights on the couch streaming the latest “premium” hit show.
Hollywood’s top A-listers are increasingly making the same switch.
Michael Mann, the acclaimed director of films Heat and The Last of the Mohicans, said the quality of TV in the US has now overtaken that of movies in many cases—something that was not common when he produced television’s Miami Vice in the 1980s.
“The perception here was quite parochial—you were categorized as one thing or another,” he told AFP. “It was cinema looking down on TV, for good reason, because TV was pretty abysmal.”
Today, “some of the best writing is going on in television,” Mann added, pointing to Netflix’s dark crime thriller Ozark and Showtime mini-series Patrick Melrose, starring Jason Bateman and Benedict Cumberbatch, respectively.
Elsewhere, Jim Carrey has starred in Showtime TV comedy Kidding, Roberts fronted Amazon drama Homecoming, and Douglas signed up for an Emmy-nominated turn in Netflix’s The Kominsky Method.