??The first #GameOfThrones spin-off pilot has been greenlit ?? AND IT HAS A FEMALE SHOWRUNNER. https://t.co/Aux1pLVobG
— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) June 8, 2018
I hope it doesn't focus too much on the White Walkers tbh, but I am very excited about the prospect of Bran the Builder. #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/JASEFTm0Be
— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) June 8, 2018
According to NYMag‘s media subblog Vulture:
When it comes to Game of Thrones spinoffs, HBO’s got multiple irons in the fire, but it looks like one of those irons is now a little hotter than the others. The network announced Friday that it ordered a pilot for a GOT prequel from George R.R. Martin and Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Secret Service), one of five GOT spinoff projects currently in development. According to Deadline, the untitled pilot will take place thousands of years before the events of the series, near the end of what is known in series lore as the Age of Heroes — a time when the Children of the Forest still lived alongside humans, when Winterfell (the home of the infamous Starks) and The Wall were built, and crucially, when the White Walkers tried to invade Westeros with an army of the dead for the first time. So basically, it’s the closest a Game of Thrones spinoff can get to being Game of Thrones, without actually being Game of Thrones…
SectionH
Not me. There are numerous stories and novels George wrote which are good/excellent imo, but no. Never wanted to go near GoT.
I’m much more worried about what Amazon is going do with Middle Earth.
SectionH
Can we now get over the hypocrisy about Fanfiction anyway?
Emma
I am possibly the last human being on Earth who hasn’t read the books or watched the show. I admit I did try the first book and simply found it too uninteresting. If I wan to read about bloody conflicts between unpleasant people I can pick up a good history of Renaissance Italy.
afanasia
Loved the books, enjoyed GoT for the most part. Have given up waiting for Lady Stoneheart to appear, though…am very sad about that.
Mike in NC
Just tuning in to MSNBC, where they are speculating about Pence positioning himself to replace Fat Bastard after the deal with North Korea goes to hell. God what a pathetic sychophant.
Claimed 9 out of 10 smokers didn’t suffer from lung cancer. Wants to be top,of the wingnut heap.
SectionH
@Emma: Get in line.
eta see #1 above. The first and hopefully last time I’ll ever have the first comment.
Mary G
I love some of the TV show, but not a big fan of the books, which needed editing with a machete. Always glad and hopeful for a woman-run show.
Viva BrisVegas
@SectionH:
If we are hoping for GRRM dramas, would have liked to see something made out of Fevre Dream.
I had always thought it was much more promising dramatic material than GoT, which goes to show how much I know.
Groucho48
The Kingsmen movies sucked big time. They are pretty much the antithesis of a GoT environment.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Emma:
Nope, I’ve not watched the show or read any of the books.
ant
where is the next book?
winter something?
it was a long time ago when I first read those books.
Iv’e given up. The TV show irritates me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SectionH:
At least you didn’t say Frist!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mike in NC:
Smokers tend to end up with throat cancer.
SectionH
@Viva BrisVegas: I’m not hoping for anything from George. I haven’t read Fevre Dream (the riverboat one, right?) but I might bestir myself to read it if it were in the works. Or not, I’m not a vampire genre fan either.
Nolacon was giving away copies of Fevre Dream, iirc, because NOLA… but they also had Equal Rites, which was new over here, certainly to me, and bless ’em for that. Hey, I finished it. Didn’t go searching, but when I ran into a used copy of Men at Arms, well, yeah. And now what I am srsly anticipating is the BBC Good Omens serial. I mean, Tennant as Crowley?
SectionH
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not to worry.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Emma:
I didn’t even last the 1/3 of an episode of GOT for the same reason.
Tokyokie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Well, cancers of the respiratory system as well as the esophagus. But smoking is linked to heart disease as well and is a leading cause of COPD. So Dense might technically be right, but surprise, surprise, he’s being disingenuous as hell. Long-term smoking kills people, and those who smoke long term and avoid its consequences are the exception rather than the rule.
EBT
I would bed money that one of these spinoffs is Dunk and Egg.
Also absolute fucker, completely removed the 5th book from the canon, works on non GoT properties to antagonize his fans, likely to pull a robert jordan.
Ruckus
@Tokyokie:
Yeah I know a lady who is about 78 and still smokes. She seems to have done so her entire adult life. No real health issues as far as I know. I wonder how many people stopped or cut back due to the taxes on cigs? I’d bet it’s less than the hoped for level.
MomSense
@Emma:
Nope, one more here. My middle son watched one season and then lost interest.
Anne Laurie
@Ruckus:
Here in Massachusetts, at least, the official line is that higher sales taxes discourage ‘marginal smokers’, especially young people, into cutting back to the point where quitting becomes easier. Theory is that a minority of true nicotine addicts are gonna end up dying in various horrible ways no matter how high the up-front price of a pack, but if “we” can keep beginners & occasional smokers from moving into the hardcore group, that’s a social bonus — not least because it reinforces the social narrative that smoking is not the norm (any more), just a quirky habit where smokers have to accommodate the common right to non-contaminated breathing.
Fifty years ago, I remember a lot more grown men spitting on the streets… anyone does that now gets major side-eye, even in not-the-best neighborhoods. Even more recently, cities ‘inevitably’ smelled like dog poop in the summer; now the norm is that anyone who *doesn’t* clean up after their dog is violating the social code.
L85NJGT
I enjoyed the early seasons, which were done on a TV budget, and were driven by tight scripting, coherent plot-lines, and character development. The break-out hit of the last couple of (truncated) seasons, has ballooned the budget and morphed it into an action CGI-a-palloza. It looks great, but doesn’t really give a shit about motivation or logical through lines. Maybe some of that is wandering off the GRRM map…. but it’s a safe bet the book series will be completed by ghost writers.
Betty Cracker
I am hoping one of the spin-offs is a Brienne of Tarth and Podrick series, where they travel from town to town and get in scrapes.
HinTN
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end.
HinTN
@Betty Cracker: I might watch that.
evodevo
@Tokyokie: He’s an idiot … depends on genetic history, too (Oooooo, scary science!! – complicated!!!). My husband’s parents both smoked and both died of lung cancer, so he gave up smoking ciggies 40 years ago. My father had COPD from it. I never smoked. Has been quite beneficial a strategy for us both. What is Dence’s goal? Bring back Big Tobacco AND Big Coal? What a maroon.
JR
I like Game of Thrones but the show has really flagged once the screenwriters outpaced the books. So I’m a little wary of a spinoff. That said, I didn’t think “Better Call Saul” could work and it has turned out even better than Breaking Bad.
JR
@Tokyokie: I remember when people dying in their 40s and 50s was considered relatively normal. And I’m not all that old.
And Pence is wrong/lying as shit. Lung cancer is the leading cause of smoking mortality and visa versa. Moreover, it’s just a matter of common sense. Combustion generates a ton of carcinogenic DNA damage agents. When you smoke you are directly applying those agents to the somewhat less protected cells in your respiratory tract. Getting cancer is relatively straightforward from that point.
Bobby Thomson
@SectionH:
No, I never cared for the Star Wars Extended Universe.
Bobby Thomson
@EBT: enough with the back story. Filling in the gaps just makes things smaller – especially when the same characters show up in unrelated stories.
John 2.0
+1 for Dunk and Egg. It’s close enough in time to the current season to use the same sets, but far for all new actors.
Probably only 6 episodes of material there, though.
Shalimar
@evodevo: Tobacco companies were giving Pence a lot of money 19 years ago when he wrote the pro-smoking column, and continued to do so for years afterwards. His deal is that he likes money. Pence is not a complicated man. He is a non-smoker though, IIRC. Even Pence isn’t that stupid.
debbie
I’d watch a series starring baby dragons.
PPCLI
@EBT:
I’m puzzled by this comment, as it must be referring to something I hadn’t heard: Is Dance with Dragons no longer official somehow?
Ken
@Emma: @?BillinGlendaleCA:
There can be only one!
Heidi Mom
I’ve read the five GoT books and have watched, and loved, the show. If I were given a few-months-to-live diagnosis, one of my first thoughts would be “But now I’ll never know how GoT ends!” That said, it’s the show that’s telling the story now, and when it ends I’m done — no spinoffs, no more books even if GRRM does write them. Just tell me what happens to Jon and Dany and Tyrion and Tormund and Brienne and Jorah and Ser Davos and Gendry and Bronn and Ghost, and I’ll be happy.
feebog
Congress needs to pass a law that GRRM has to finish books 6 and 7 before he is allowed to collaborate on any other GoT projects. It is beyond irritating that it has been 6 or 7 years and book 6 is not out, let alone book 7. I am older than GRRM and at this point I’m resigned to leaving this mortal coil without seeing the series completed.
ruemara
I’m excited for a female roadrunner & for Kingsman.
Fair Economist
@L85NJGT:
GRRM also wandered off his map – he’s quite upfront about it in the afterword to Dance with Dragons. He had an overall plan, got to the 4th book, decided the plan wasn’t working out, tossed the plan, and started winging it (OK, he’s not quite so blunt but that’s a fair summary). Hence the 4th and 5th books are meandering, as are the series based on them. I don’t think he’s going to finish the series either, but he’s indicated he doesn’t want ghostwriters/posthumous completion, so it’s just not going to get finished at all. The TV series will be the only finish, and it will probably be at least as good as GRRM’s finish would have been.
PJ
@John 2.0: Martin has said a Dunk and Egg series is not going to happen until he completes the Dunk and Egg stories (supposedly 6 more to go), which, if it’s anything like his progress on the last two books of A Song of Ice and Fire, is not going to happen, unless writing those stories, like the Westerosi history book he has coming out this fall, will help him procrastinate from finishing ASOIAF, in which case, maybe he will come out with some more stories over the next decade.
John 2.0
@PJ: Yeah, GRRM says a lot of things, and history shows us HBO sized checks usually have the last word.
Villago Delenda Est
@Heidi Mom: You left out Arya. Prepare for an encounter with no one.
artem1s
@Mike in NC:
wants to reclaim the original death lobbyists. Big Tobacco. In the grocery store, ballpark, office, bar or hospital? no problem, second hand smoke deaths, fake news! Smoke ’em if you got ’em
artem1s
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
My father died of lung cancer. It metastasized to his heart first and then liver. In the end it was probably technically heart failure that killed him. But only because liver failure didn’t get him first. My friend’s mother – lung cancer that spread to her brain. Lung cancer is a fucking bitch. It spreads aggressively. and there is virtually no real treatment if surgery is out of the question. It’s probably just a matter of time before my mother dies of second hand smoke exposure. Me and my siblings were all at risk of addiction because of early exposure. Children on smokers dis-proportionally become smokers and suffer and die from smoking related illnesses. And these mother fuckers know it.
J R in WV
I remember sitting in the back seat of the car with my little brother, we both hated, hated cigarette smoke, and until 1960 both parents smoked. Dad quit in ’60, but mom kept it up until a doctor told her, “Mrs. __ you’re not going to live through the winter if you don’t quit smoking completely!” on her 3rd case of pneumonia that winter.
She quit, made it through that winter, made it several more years, actually, but came down with COPD, which is a really bad way to go.
I have never smoked a cigarette, nor used any form of tobacco. I did help the neighbors — elderly Appalachian bachelor farmers — to plant and harvest their tobacco. It truly does smell wonderful curing in the barn, where it hangs and dries for months before being taken to the auction and turned into cash money for the year.
But for it being the only cash income for Wood and Earl, I would never have had anything to do with it. Now that whole rural culture is gone, after the quota system ended the prices fluctuate so much you never know if it will bring in enough to pay for the cost of growing it.
Where you used to see big fields of tobacco growing in the summer, now there’s the rare hobby patch for someone growing their own instead of paying the big companies for their smokes.
But it does smell great hanging in the barn!
No One You Know
@Heidi Mom: Yes! And Arya, as another commenter mentioned. Also interested in how Bran’s story moves forward.
I’ve enjoyed cross-research on historical references as the seasons wound on. There was a King Joffrey and Queen Sancia. The York and Lancaster refs went pear-shaped, as far as I could tell. But it was never historical fiction, admittedly.
Yutsano
@SectionH: I know the show is already cast, but you CANNOT tell me Nathan Lane wouldn’t make a brilliant Aziraphale.
kindness
I love GOT. Action adventure/fantasy especially when set in era’s long ago. Honestly I’m apprehensive about this prequel. It could be good subject matter but I’m worried it ends up diminishing the GOT series. I mean, if it ends up like Star Wars prequils vs The Hobbit prequil. When it comes out I’ll give it a go. Just to see.
Matt
@kindness: Meesa gonna hodor