So it turns out everything we thought would happen in those Game of Thrones spinoffs is entirely wrong—beginning with the term "spinoff." "None of these new shows will be 'spinning off' from GOT in the traditional sense," George R.R. Martin wrote on his Live Journal on Sunday evening. But, clearing up some of the mystery around the upcoming four (now five, apparently) Game of Thrones shows, Martin outlined some key details about the "successor shows" as he likes to call them.
It won't be about any of the current Game of Thrones characters.
This is devastating. For years all we've wanted is more Pod, and now that there's a chance to give poor, sweet Pod his own show—it's not going to happen. As Martin wrote, "We are not talking Joey or AfterMASH or even Frasier 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."
George R.R. Martin is personally working with all the writers on the upcoming projects.
Martin writes that he has been involved with these successor shows since August and has been working with all of the writers involved. In fact, the writing is going so well that there are more shows in development than previously reported. "We had four scripts in development when I arrived in L.A. last week, but by the time I left we had five," Martin wrote. But this doesn't mean we'll be getting five shows at once. "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)."
They won't be about the two huge plots everyone expected.
While Martin said he wouldn't say what these successor shows would be about, he did say that they won't revolve around the two stories that seemed the most obvious: Dunk & Egg and Robert's Rebellion. As Martin said of his Dunk & Egg stories—prequels set 90 years before the events in Game of Thrones:
"I've only written and published three novellas to date, and there are at least seven or eight or ten 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."
And while everyone wants him to write about Robert's Rebellion, "By the time I finish writing A Song of Ice and Fire, you will know every important thing that happened in Robert's Rebellion," Martin wrote. "There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know."
Oh yeah, he also hasn't finished that goddamn book yet, either.
