Despite the massive success of House of the Dragon — easily one of the most popular series of 2022 – the turmoil behind the scenes at HBO Max and its newly-formed parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, has apparently thrown some turbulence at the planned slate of Game of Thrones spinoff series.
In a new update to his blog, Thrones creator George R.R. Martin shared that the “changes” at the streaming service have caused delays to some of the series. However, he does say that some of the series are actually moving faster, but also, none of them have been greenlit as of this writing. In other words, it’s a pretty fluid situation over there.
Via Not A Blog:
But now I am back in the salt mine, working… working on so many bloody things, my head may soon explode. Yes, WINDS OF WINTER, yes, yes. And HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, season two. And several of the other successor shows that we’re developing with HBO. (Some of those are moving faster than others, as is always the case with development. None have been greenlit yet, though we are hoping… maybe soon. A couple have been shelved, but I would not agree that they are dead. You can take something off the shelf as easily as you can put it on the shelf. All the changes at HBO Max have impacted us, certainly).
Again, given the mammoth success of House of the Dragon, you’d assume WB Discovery would be eager to crank out another series sooner rather than later. However, the spinoff was wildly expensive, and the media company is desperately trying to cut costs across the board. Since the merger, WB Discovery has not been afraid to axe series and straight-up pull titles from its own streaming service.
While Game of Thrones is presumably safe, it tracks that there’d be some extra added caution about dumping more money on a spinoff when there’s no guarantee that it could repeat the success of the original series or House of the Dragon.
(Via Not A Blog)