Game of Thrones fans have been hoping they'd get a spinoff or prequel once the main series wraps up in 2018. The good news is there will be four.
Ahead of the penultimate season of the Emmy-winning fantasy series premiering this summer, HBO has started development on multiple spinoffs to hit the air in the years ahead.
According to Variety, the Song of Ice and Fire book series' author George RR Martin is working right now with four sets of writers to develop shows each set in different Westeros time periods.
Those writers working with Martin include Kong: Skull Island's Max Borenstein, Kingsman: The Secret Service's Jane Goldman, L.A. Confidential's Academy Award winner Brian Helgeland and Westworld's Carly Wray.
At this current stage, Game of Thrones co-showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss are apparently not attached to write for any of those spinoffs but will be involved as producers along with Martin.
There is, of course, no guarantee that all four of these shows will eventually make the air once Game of Thrones officially calls it a day.
But since HBO depends on Game of Thrones more than any other show to drive up subscriptions, it seems at least plausible that most, if not all, of these spinoffs will eventually reach our screens in one form or another.
Responding to the breaking news on Thursday, a spokesperson for HBO said: "We'll take as much or as little time as the writers need and, as with all our development, we will evaluate what we have when the scripts are in."
It was HBO programming president Casey Bloys who first broke the news about a possible spinoff series while promoting his channel's spring line-up at the TCA Press Tour in January.
"All I can say is that we're exploring it. We don't have any scripts, we're not even close to saying 'Oh, let's do this'," Bloys explained at the time. "But it's a big enough property that we would be foolish not to explore it. It's a really rich world. We'd be foolish not to look at it."
However, Bloys also clarified soon after that HBO was more interested in a prequel than simply spinning off Jon Snow, Dany or Tyrion into their own show.
"A prequel feels like it has less pressure on it [than a spin-off]," he explained to Entertainment Weekly. "George RR Martin's history of Westeros] gives you areas in which to say to a writer, 'If you were going to do this, then go flesh it out,' and we'll see what comes back. But I don't feel any pressure that we have to have something."
All we can do now is wait and see what avenue these four spinoffs take and how they'll interact with the main continuity of Game of Thrones (if they do interact at all).
Game of Thrones season 7 premieres on Sunday night, 16 July at 9pm ET on HBO in the US, and simultaneously at 2 on Monday, 17 July on Sky Atlantic in the UK. Watch a trailer below:
