After many months of speculation and rumours, HBO has officially confirmed that it is making a Game of Thrones prequel. This new series comes from writer Jane Goldman and A Song of Ice and Fire writer George R.R. Martin, who also serves as co-executive producer on Game of Thrones.
"Taking place thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series chronicles the world's descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros' history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend … it's not the story we think we know.”
In Game of Thrones lore, the Age of Heroes is when legendary figures like Bran the Builder were alive. As The Song of Ice and Fire wiki reads:
The Age of Heroes was an era during the history of Westeros which takes its name from the great men and women who lived in the years of peace that followed the forging of the Pact between the First Men and the children of the forest.Many noble houses trace their family histories to the Age of Heroes and many stories, songs, and legends are told about it. It is an era that is shrouded in mystery, with more myth than fact known about it. There are numerous tales from the Age of Heroes, too many to count. These histories were not recorded in books but passed down from generation to generation through story and song. While some of them may be dismissed as fairytales everyone one of the Seven Kingdoms is defined by them.
There has been much speculation about what part of Westeros history could be used as fodder for a Game of Thrones prequel. And Martin himself has quelled rumours that it will be based on previous works of his. 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."
He's also confirmed that this will not be about Robert's Rebellion, the war that took place immediately before the events of Game of Thrones.
"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 said last year. "There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know."
There's no information about when this new series will be released, but HBO president of programming Casey Bloys said there would be time between the GoT finale and the new spinoff.
"There is not going to be anything in any scenario where we have any sort of prequel air for at least a year after that," he told Deadline. "I want the final season of Game of Thrones to be the final season of Game of Thrones, I don't want to use it to launch something else, I want it to stand as the finale of the greatest TV show of all time, I don't want to do anything that infringes on that."
For now, we only know the basic premise and who is working on it. Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss meanwhile have moved onto the Star Wars universe.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
