The Battle To Replace Game Of Thrones The Hollywood Reporter

The slyly arrogant prince leads a strategic meeting inside Dragonstone Castle’s torch relay. “I want patrols along the perimeter of the island,” declares the glowing Demon, dressed in black with long, silver-blonde hair. “Arm the dragon riders, they are capable fighters… we have the Syrax, the Caraxes and the Tyraxes and…” Smith pauses. What is the name of the fourth dragon again? “Oh, for the hell of it!” Smith shouts. “Fucking no! I want to… oh fuck it!” Actress Emma D’Arcy, who plays free-spirited princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, agrees: “All dragons have weird names with Xes in them!” “I literally got to the point where I thought I was naming Santa’s reindeer,” Smith admits. The names of House of the Dragon’s characters – and its dragons certainly count as characters – have been a source of debate. HBO’s highly anticipated Game of Thrones prequel series is based on George RR Martin’s 700-page book Fire & Blood, which chronicles the history of House Targaryen and its dragon-riding royal family. The author aims for authenticity, and real-life dynasties tend to have a lot of repeated names and suffixes (England has had 11 kings named Edward, after all). So early in the writing process, Dragon showrunner Miguel Sapochnik pointed out to his colleague Ryan Condal that they would have, for example, a Princess Rhaenyra and a Princess Rhaenys unless they started making changes to Martin’s mythology. “You know we have to change some names,” Shapotznik told Kondal. And Kondal answered: “We cannot.” Which firmly established that the production would take a steadfastly faithful approach to adapting Martin’s complex world. “I’ve been a fan of these books for 20 years,” Kodal explains. “I was a fan of Game of Thrones – I watched the pilot the night it aired on HBO and every episode since. You can’t follow Thrones, it’s the Beatles. I’m starting out as a fan doing what I want to see and I’m happy with what we’ve achieved. The Targaryens are like the Jedi in Star Wars where you hear about this era where they were abundant and powerful and they always wanted to see that. And now you arrive.” But the first sequel to what was arguably the biggest hit of the 21st century was an epic struggle almost as high-stakes and dramatic as the show itself. Just figuring out which story to tell from Martin’s numerous Westeros and Essos books took years of painstaking effort and a number of talented writers and executives. Hundreds of millions were spent and some heads ended up on spikes. And it all started the moment Game of Thrones began to end. July 2016: HBO had just announced that Game of Thrones would end with its eighth and final season – agreeing with showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss’ creative plan. The network’s strategy discussion, led by the company’s chief content officer Casey Bloys, immediately turned to what project based on Martin’s work they might do next. The goal was obvious. Mood, restless. HBO could attempt to create a Thrones franchise like Disney did with Marvel and Star Wars. Except HBO had never made a single spinoff series in its then four-decade history — let alone a massive creative universe — and some at the company worried that Thrones might be a one-off sensation. The series began as an underdog in 2011 and has had a meteoric rise to become a television and pop culture phenomenon, as well as the most Emmy-winning drama of all time. To follow Thrones with failure would be very embarrassing and expensive. However, the rewards… well, the rewards were potentially staggering: a stream of title content that could span decades and bring in billions in revenue. It’s like this hypothetical investment question: Would you rather have a guaranteed $1 million or flip a coin for $1 billion? HBO decided to start spinning coins. “They were understandably very nervous about the failure and the failure to live up to the original order,” recalled one person early on in the development discussions. “I don’t think there was a lot of confidence internally [that Thrones was a franchise] because the show was so big and so important.” HBO executive vice president of drama Francesca Orsi recalls, “We saw it as an opportunity to keep telling great stories, but not necessarily to try to replace Game of Thrones as the most epic show in history.” Santa Fe-based Martin flew to Los Angeles to meet with HBO executives. He initially raised two ideas. The first was a series based on the relatively light novels of Dunk and Egg, which follow a knight who wanders Westeros with a young knight. The second was called The Dance of the Dragons, which chronicled the civil war between Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors, an affair that tore Westeros apart 180 years before the events of Thrones. “The dance had all the intrigue, the competition for the Iron Throne, murders, duels, big battles, 20 dragons — all of that,” Martin says. George RR Martin Amanda Edwards/Getty Images HBO passed on Dunk and Egg (at first, at least). Executives liked Dance, but didn’t want to let the fate and fortune of a potential franchise drive an idea. “I wanted to give ourselves every chance to succeed,” says Bloys. “You don’t want to say, ‘We’re going to replace the biggest show of all time and it’s all scripted.’ The network researched Martin’s collective works and came up with about 15 potential prequel concepts. Since showrunners Benioff and Weiss had refused to get involved with spinoffs, HBO met with a variety of writers. “We tried everything,” says Bloys. “There were no very strange ideas.” Well, maybe one: A series idea that sounds like a superhero team about the legendary Seven Gods of Westeros as if they were real people. The story followed a Father, a Smith, a Warrior, etc. as they had adventures and began to be worshiped as gods. “That didn’t go very far,” says one insider dryly. Finally five concepts were selected and put into development. They were all prequels before the events of Thrones. This unprecedented bake-off approach would politely become known on the internet as The War of the Five Pitches. One attempt was a script about the destruction of the ancient Targaryen empire of Valyria by Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), another was a take on the Dornish warrior queen Nymeria by Oscar winner Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential) and another – like much of this story, which has never been told before – was about Aegon’s conquest of Westeros and was written by Rand Ravich and Far Shariat (The Astronaut’s Wife). This script depicted the William the Conqueror-inspired figure as a drunken reveler. For Dance, HBO first approached writer Carly Wray, who had experience writing dark fantasy dramas like Westworld and Watchmen. But Rey and Martyn couldn’t agree on when the story should begin amid the long and confusing timeline of Targaryen history. “Wars often begin in times of peace,” says Martin’s book, and it was important for the author to show this transition. But such a move would mean a streak that spanned generations, and how exactly would that work? Next came Bryan Cogman, a co-executive producer on Thrones who wrote many acclaimed episodes of the original series and understood the franchise as well as anyone. Insiders say his take on Dance was good, but HBO ultimately passed. “At first HBO was like, ‘How can we flip [Thrones]?” Sapochnik recalls. “A Dance with Dragons felt like an obvious prequel. So I think they were less warm to it because they were like, “Well, who wants to see more Game of Thrones?” And then the irony, of course, is: a lot of people.” Agrees Condal, “The desire at HBO was to not just offer a sequel about the war for the throne. They wanted to do something so completely different that it would blow everyone’s minds. I think that’s why they went with The Long Night.” Showrunners Miguel Sapochnik (left) and Ryan Condal. Photographed by Dan Kennedy In 2018, a year before Thrones aired its series finale, HBO announced a pilot order for a possible successor series: a show called Bloodmoon, set years before the events of Thrones, during legendary Age of Heroes and the winter apocalypse known as The Long Night. Its showrunner, Jane Goldman, has had considerable success making acclaimed R-rated genre hits with titles like Kick-Ass and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. According to Orsi, Bloodmoon won the bake-off on merit. “Bloodmoon really stood out as different, with unique world-building,” says Orsi. “Totally it felt very grown-up, sophisticated and intelligent, and there was a thematic discussion at its core about obsolescence in the face of colonialism and religious extremism.” Except Martin had only published about eight lines of text about the show’s time period, leaving Goldman little to build on. “Bloodmoon was a very difficult mission,” says Martin. “We are dealing with a much more primitive people. There were no dragons yet. A lot of the pilots revolved around a marriage of a Southern house with a Northern house, and it went into the whole story of the White Walkers.” Martin made his concerns clear to HBO, and an insider admits, “Having a show that’s pure invention and having George scratch his head at various times was unsettling at times.” A cast was assembled led by Naomi Watts. Huge new sets were built. A Bloodmoon pilot was shot for $30 to $35 million. And the result was locked in a dungeon so deep…