Emma D'Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen in "House of the Dragon" Credit - Ollie Upton / HBO
While it was on the air, Game of Thrones was the most popular television series in the world. The show had an average viewership of over 32 million in its first seven seasons and in its eighth and final season, which concluded in 2019, it averaged 46 million across US platforms. The show is also the second-most awarded television series in Emmys history, so it only makes sense that HBO would use the show's popularity and expand its universe. Audiences did not have to go too long without new Game of Thrones content, with the House of the Dragon spinoff debuting in August 2022.
Dragon returns for its second season on June 16, but it's probably won't be the last Game of Thrones property to reach your screens. Several other spinoffs are also in the works; however, the status of each project is constantly in flux. To keep up to date with which shows will get made and which have already gotten the axe, here's a guide to the status of every Game of Thrones spinoff series.
After a nearly two-year wait since its premiere on HBO, the highly anticipated second season of House of the Dragon is finally making its way to Max. The show's first season was an instant hit, amassing a dedicated fan base and earning eight Emmy nominations.
The prequel series takes place almost 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and precisely 172 years before the birth of the pivotal character, Daenerys Targaryen. It follows Rhaenyra Targaryen (played by Emma D'Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), formerly inseparable best friends and now enemies, in the events leading up to the Dance of the Dragons, a civil war within House Targaryen that set the house's downfall in motion. Season 2 sees Rhaenyra and Alicent leading their factions -- Team Green and Team Black -- in a fight for the Iron Throne.
Among the various spinoff projects planned for the Game of Thrones universe, Snow was the only direct sequel. Kit Harington, who played Jon Snow in the original series, signed on to the project that Thrones book author George R.R. Martin confirmed was happening on his blog in June 2022. However, the show might be dead in the water. "It's not happening -- and not happening anytime soon anyway," Harington told Entertainment Weekly in April. He said the development team "bounced some ideas around, and nothing really lit us up." He continues, "It just didn't. I think we don't want to do something that's not worth it. So for the time being, we're just shelving it."
The original idea for the show was to follow Snow after the events of Game of Thrones. A quick recap for those who don't remember: Snow realizes that Daenerys is his aunt when he discovers that he is not Ned Stark's son but rather his nephew. His mother was Lynna Stark, and his father was Rhaegar Targaryen. He is sent to the Night's Watch at the Wall in the North after killing Daenerys in the final episode of the series.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is so far the only other Game of Thrones spinoff given the green light from HBO. The show, formerly titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, was one of the many productions affected by the Hollywood strikes in the summer of 2023, but it is already cast and set to begin filming this year. It is planned to be released in 2025.
The show is centered around Martin's collection of novellas called The Tales of Dunk and Egg. The author wrote on his blog that the new show will "be a lot shorter than Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, with a much different tone." The six-episode series will be set only a century before the events of Game of Thrones and will follow two characters: Dunk (Peter Claffey), a squire who attempts to pass himself off as a knight, and Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), a "diminutive" squire who will later rise to prominence.
Flea Bottom was an idea for show that would explore King's Landing's poorest district, but it was in its very early stages of development before it was ultimately canceled.
While it hasn't officially been confirmed that the show is happening for sure, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that HBO found a writer for a show centered around Aegon the Conqueror. The show is still in the early stages of development, but Matthew Tomlin -- a co-writer for the sequel to 2022's The Batman movie -- is attached to the project. The show is said to take place not too soon before the events of House of the Dragon and tell the story of Aegon Targaryen -- the famed king of Westeros. Aegon is credited with uniting six of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros through a devastating conquest on dragonback.
An idea for a prequel surrounding Princess Nymeria, 1,000 years before Game of Thrones, was conceived but ultimately scrapped. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland, who signed on to write, told Inverse that the show is not moving forward -- for now. "I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original," he said during the interview. "That's why it hasn't been picked up yet, but nothing is ever dead."
Of the plot, Helgeland said that "it was the story of Moses but swapping him out for Nymeria." He explains that Nymeria's country "gets ruined and her people are forced to live on the water, which is why the show was called Ten Thousand Ships."
Audiences met the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon, in Season 1 of House of the Dragon. There were rumblings from publications in 2021 that his backstory was going to be told in a spinoff series with the working title: Nine Voyages. According to Deadline, the title refers to the nine great voyages Corlys embarks on a ship called the Sea Snake. In December, Martin announced on his blog that due to the nature of the show, it would work better as an animated show, and that seems to be the plan now.
"Budgetary constraints would likely have made a live action version prohibitively expensive, what with half the show taking place at sea, and the necessity of creating a different port every week, from Driftmark to Lys to the Basilisk Isles to Volantis to Qarth to... well, on and on and on," Martin wrote in his December blog post. "There's a whole world out there. And we have a lot better chance of showing it all with animation."
According to Entertainment Weekly, the script for the pilot is being written by Bruno Heller, who wrote The Mentalist and Rome.
Bloodmoon was almost the successor to Game of Thrones. The show filmed a pilot that allegedly cost HBO $35 million to make and starred Naomi Watts. According to reports, it was said to have been set thousands of years before the original show and centered around the events leading up to the Long Night War against the White Walkers. The official logline said the plot of the show "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."
However, the premise alone wasn't enough to save the show and it was scrapped altogether. "It required a lot more invention; it was higher risk, higher reward," HBO CEO Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter. "There wasn't anything glaringly wrong with it. Development and pilots are hard." Robert Gleenblatt, the chairman of WarnerMedia, echoed Bloys' sentiment in the same story, saying, "It wasn't unwatchable or horrible or anything. It was very well produced and looked extraordinary. But it didn't take me to the same place as the original series. It didn't have that depth and richness that the original series' pilot did."
Given the backlog of live-action Game of Thrones projects waiting to be greenlit, it makes sense that some producers are exploring the potential of animation. Sea Snake/Nine Voyages might be headed in that direction, and another project named The Golden Empire might be following down that path as well. This project is about Martin's version of imperial China, which in the show is called Yi Ti.
Not much has been said publicly about the status of this show, from HBO or otherwise, but Martin updated his fans about the project in a 2022 blog post. "The news leaked several months ago that one of the animated shows would be set in Yi Ti," the post reads. "That's true. Our working title is The Golden Empire, and we have a great young writer on that one too, and I think the art and animation is just going to be beautiful. I would tell you more if I could. I don't think I can say a word about the other animated shows. Not yet."
In 2021, Entertainment Weekly reported that HBO was looking for more Game of Thrones spinoffs and had been meeting with writers about different ideas. One of which was about Robert's Rebellion, a war in which Robert Baratheon, Eddard Stark, and Jon Arryn depose Aerys II Targaryen, a.k.a. the Mad King, a few decades before the events of the original series. Not much has been said about this project and there doesn't seem to be any updates regarding its status.
