It’s been less than a year since Game of Thrones ended its illustrious run with, shall we say, a whimper, and HBO has been hard at work creating content set in the GOT universe. With several contenders previously announced, HBO has narrowed their focus to House of the Dragon, a prequel series based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood. The series, which takes place 300 years before GOT, follows the rise of House Targaryen. Expect madness and dragons, y’all.
The show, which has already received a straight to series order, is set to premiere sometime in 2022. GOT director Miguel Sapochnik is teaming up with Ryan Condal (Colony) to showrun the series. HBO President of Programming Casey Bloys discussed the series during the TCAs, where he said, “For me for right now, I think getting House of the Dragon on the air will be the number one priority … There are no other blinking green lights or anything like that. Sometime down the road who knows, but there are no immediate plans. We are all focusing on House of the Dragon.”
House of the Dragon‘s series order comes after a contentious year of competing spin-offs, which include the cancellation of the highly anticipated “Age of Heroes” prequel. Hopes were high for the defunct series, which was written by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service) and starred Naomi Watts.
A female-driven GOT series would have offered a whole new perspective for the frustratingly male-dominated franchise, but HBO abruptly pulled the plug on the pilot. Bloys said of the project, “In development, in pilots, sometimes things come together, sometimes they don’t. One of the things I think Jane took on beautifully, which was a challenge, there was a lot more world creation because she set hers 8,000 years before the (mothership) show, so it required a lot more. That is a big swing. One of the things about House of Dragons, there is a text, there is a book so that made it a little bit more of a road map for a series order.”
He followed up by saying, “I think Jane did a beautiful job, it was a big challenge but there was nothing that I would point to and say, oh, that one element did not work, just overall it did not quite gel.” It’s a disappointing but hardly unexpected outcome. These shows cost a small fortune to make, so it’s no surprise that HBO wanted to bank on an existing Martin text and well known GOT family.
But House of the Dragon may suffer from the same lack of energy that plagued another prequel series: Gotham. Gotham was hemmed in by (among other things) the knowledge that Bruce Wayne had to survive and grow up to be Batman. And the same went for the rogues gallery. The series lacked any urgency or suspense because it was hamstrung by the existing Batman mythology.
Similarly, how will viewers get invested in the Targaryens, when we know full well that madness, destruction, and betrayal are all that awaits them? We’ll have to wait until 2022 to see how HBO solves this problem.
(via Deadline, image: HBO)
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