Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon gets a 2022 release date
The prequel series just got a little more real (unlike the canned The Long Night).
- Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards
The dragons are coming.
HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon has scored a (tentative) release date. The 10-episode series will premiere sometime in 2022, according to HBO programming chief Casey Bloys.
"They are in the room breaking story right now," Bloys told Variety at the Television Critics Association tour on Wednesday. "My guess is we'll see it on the air in '22."
House of the Dragon is slated to tell the story of the House of Targaryen 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin is involved with its creation, drawing from his 2018 A Song of Ice and Fire companion tome Fire and Blood.
HBO canned the unofficially titled The Long Night prequel series set to star Naomi Watts last October. Bloys offered hope that House of the Dragon won't meet the same fate.
"Pilots -- sometimes they come together, sometimes they don't," he said. "And I would say that was very much the case here. There's nothing I would point to and say, 'Oh, this was the problem.'"
Watts' series, co-created by Martin and Jane Goldman (co-writer of Kingsman and its sequel), didn't have the benefits of the companion novel's "roadmap."
"That [prequel] was 8,000 years before the current show, so it required a lot more invention," he said. "One of the benefits of House of the Dragon is there was a text from George and there was a little bit more of a roadmap. [Goldman's prequel] did have more challenges in terms of establishing a world, but I think she handled that beautifully… there wasn't one glaring thing."
Martin may be busy, but he definitely has time to finish writing Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
"I expect to be involved in [the production of House of the Dragon] to some extent… and, who knows, if things work out, I may even be able to script a few episodes, as I did for the first four seasons of Game Of Thrones," Martin wrote on his blog last October.
"But… let me make this perfectly clear… I am not taking on any scripts until I have finished and delivered Winds Of Winter. Winter is still coming, and Winds remains my priority, as much as I'd love to write an [episode] of House."
