Winter may be coming in 2019, but the wait for what’s beyond The Wall will be a lot longer.
Speaking at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour on Thursday, HBO programming manager Casey Bloys stated that the network intends to allow at least one full year to pass following the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones before debuting any of the five possible spin-offs currently in the works.
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“They’re moving along. We have some really talented writers working on them,” Bloys told Entertainment Weekly. “The one thing I will tell you, which we talked about before, any sort of pilot-to-series [order], there’s not going to be anything on our air for a least a year after Game of Thrones airs. We’re not using the final season to launch a new show or anything like that. There’s going to be a separation between the two. These are among the best writers working and I’m hopeful.”
News that the Seven Kingdoms would be expanding first came in May, when HBO confirmed that it was actively developing four different Game of Thrones spin-offs. In September, it was announced that the network was developing a fifth possible spin-off.
In October, as a few of the scripts were delivered, HBO said that it had been dealt an “embarrassment of riches,” but that they were confident they’d find something to move forward with.
“It’s a fantastic group of writers and talent, most of whom have lived inside the Thrones eco-system so are very, very familiar with its intricacies,” said Richard Plepler, the chairman and CEO of HBO. “I think we will find with this embarrassment of [writing] riches an exciting property for us to move forward with. We are looking some things, I have read a couple of early bibles and I’m excited about what I’ve seen.”
While little is known about the spin-offs, they are said to explore different time periods within the universe that George R. R. Martin had created.
Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Golden Circle), Brian Helgeland (Legend), Carly Wray (Mad Men, The Leftovers) and Bryan Cogman (Thrones co-executive producer) are the five writers working on the five different spin-offs. Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, as well as A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, are also said to be attached to the projects.
