A new “Game of Thrones” prequel series, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight,” has been ordered to series at HBO.
The new series is set a century before the events of “Game of Thrones” and will follow Ser Duncan the Tall and his companion Egg, executives at parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced Wednesday at an event where they unveiled Max, a new streaming service which combines offerings from HBO Max and Discovery+.
“Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” will be written and executive produced by George R.R. Martin and Ira Martin. Ryan Condal and Vince Gerardis will also executive produce.
The spinoff, which will build off George R.R. Martin’s beloved series, follows in the footsteps of “House of the Dragon,” which draws inspiration from Martin’s “Fire & Blood” to explore the legacy of House Targaryen 200 years before the events of “Game of Thrones.”
The news comes just a day after “House of the Dragon” began production on its sophomore season with Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Matt Smith, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno and Rhys Ifans reprising their Season 1 roles.
While “House of the Dragon” Season 2 has been confirmed for a shortened eight-episode run, series co-creator, executive producer and showrunner Ryan Condal previously teased that the storied Targaryen bloodline spanning both before and after the “House of the Dragon” timeline could be explored in an additional spinoff series.
“I’ve always said the show is called ‘House of the Dragon.’ It’s not called ‘The Dance of the Dragons,’” Condal told TheWrap, referring to a specific Targaryen civil war set in the universe of Martin’s books. “And I think there is a very rich 300-year Targaryen dynasty to mine many stories out of, and that is the thing that I think is the most promising for the future for fans of Westeros is that George [R.R. Martin] has written some deeply complex history. That’s three centuries long that begins with Aegon’s Conquest — actually it begins before Aegon’s Conquest with the story of the Targaryens leaving old Valyria because of the dream of one little girl. There are so many stories to be mined out of there. I think as long as there’s a willing audience, there is plenty of Targaryen to come.”
In fact, Condal’s first pitch for a “Thrones” spinoff to HBO and Martin was the Dunk and Egg storyline that will be explored in “Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”
“I still, frankly, love the idea of that story as a counterpoint to the original ‘Game of Thrones’ and to what we’re doing, because it’s more of a ‘Lone Wolf and Cub,’” Condal told TheWrap. “It’s more of ‘The Mandalorian’ versus the original ‘Star Wars’ where it’s just two guys making their way through this very complex and dangerous and highly political world that aren’t necessarily political themselves, which I always thought was interesting as an adventure tale to tell in Westeros.”
HBO has not set a timetable for when “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” will debut.
