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'Games of Thrones' spinoff shows won't start until 2020

Don't expect the five prequel shows to pop up right after the final season wraps, HBO's president says. Hey, maybe we'll have a new book by then?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
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The waiting is the hardest part, "Game of Thrones" fans might agree.

HBO

"Game of Thrones" fans are used to waiting. Waiting for author George R.R. Martin to come out with "The Winds of Winter," waiting for the HBO hit show's final season to air in 2019. Now they'll need to settle in to wait for the eventual planned prequel shows too.

None of the new shows will air until a year after the "Game of Thrones" final season wraps up, Casey Bloys, HBO's programming president, told The Hollywood Reporter Thursday. That puts them solidly in 2020 or later.

"There are five of them," Bloys said. "If we do a pilot and series, nothing is going to air on HBO until at least a year after the final season. We're not doing a final season (of 'Game of Thrones') and then, "Following it at 11 p.m. …"

Bloys wouldn't share anything about the five shows' plots (though we had some suggestions -- Dothraki for the win!). It's already been established that no current characters will carry over to the new shows, and they'll all be set before "Game of Thrones" time period.

But Bloys did comment on the final-season episodes, coming in 2019. "They're great," he said. "It's fantastic. The fans are going to be very, very happy."

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