At last count there were two Game of Thrones spinoffs in production and six more in “development,” but since then we heard that some had been “shelved” without hearing which ones, exactly. Now, we may have a clue thanks to producer Vince Gerardis of the company Startling, Inc. Gerardis’ website keeps a running list of shows in development, and fans noticed two Game of Thrones spinoffs were deleted recently – Nine Voyages of the Sea Snake and Ten Thousand Ships.
An archived version of the Startling website shows that many projects have been deleted from the “development column” over the last few months, including two of the most prominent Game of Thrones spinoffs we knew of. It lists a show called Nine Voyages of the Sea Snake, though author George R.R. Martin wrote on his blog that the show was originally titled Nine Voyages then changed to The Sea Snake. That show would have been a prequel set a few decades before House of the Dragon, depicting the life of a young Corlys Velaryon – played on the show by Steven Toussaint.
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Meanwhile, Ten Thousand Ships would have been a far-flung prequel set about 1,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, at the height of the Valyrian empire – Danaerys’ dragon-riding ancestors. It would have been about the Rhoynish – a river-dwelling people said to have magical powers over water, who fled their home in Essos under threat of dragons and resettled in Dorne, the southernmost of the Seven Kingdoms.
Three other adaptations of Martin’s writing have been removed from the Startling list as well, including Ice Dragon and Sandkings. Both would have been adaptations of novellas by the same names, but they are apparently off the table now. The third is Wildcards – a series that Martin co-writes and edits with other authors. Meanwhile, the Startling website’s archive reflects that Dunk & Egg got its official title, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. However it still hasn’t moved from development into the “produced” column even though HBO has greenlit the series.
Of course, this is far from confirmation that Ten Thousand Ships and The Sea Snake have been dropped altogether. Neither Martin, HBO or anyone else involved have made official statements about it, and Martin made it clear that “shelved” is not the same as canceled. He wrote: “You can take something off the shelf as easily as you can put it on the shelf.”
Taking those two off the table leaves up to four other shows in development. SNOW would be a sequel to Game of Thrones with Kit Harington reprising his role as Jon Snow, while Aegon’s Conquest would be a prequel about the Targaryen conquest of Westeros, according to a report by Variety. The other two are both animated shows – one with no details so far and one that would be about the far-off land of Yi Ti, east of anything we’ve seen in Martin’s work so far. There has been little news on any of these four projects in months.
Whatever happens to those projects, fans of A Song of Ice and Fire have a lot to look forward to in the months and years to come with Martin’s reported progress on his next book, The Winds of Winter, not to mention House of the Dragon Season 2 slated for the summer of 2024. The Hedge Knight begins filming soo, and as always Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are streaming on Max. Martin’s books are available in print, digital and audiobook formats.
