'Game of Thrones' Spinoff Undergoes Massive Change
The spinoff about Corlys Velaryon is still in development, but now as an animated series, not a live-action one.
One of the Game of Thrones spinoff shows in development at HBO has been shifted from a live-action series to an animated one, according to author George R.R. Martin. Martin made a blog post on Sunday giving fans updates on some of the A Song of Ice and Fire adaptations in the works. He revealed that the series Nine Voyages is now in development as an animated series, not a live-action one.
Nine Voyages has also been referred to as The Sea Snake, but in either case it's the working title for a prequel set decades before House of the Dragon. It's about the life of the character Corlys Velaryon – played in House of the Dragon by Steven Toussaint – who sailed around the world on nine great trading voyages to enrich his house. In the process, he saw some of the most remote corners of Martin's fictional world that readers have been dying to get a closer look at. They may still get a glimpse, but according to Martin they are more likely to see it animated.
Martin wrote that he "fully supports" the switch to animation for this show, adding: "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. There's a whole world out there. And we have a lot better chance of showing it all with animation. So we now have three animated projects underway."
Little is known about the other two animated projects Martin referenced here. One is a series about the far-off kingdom of Yi Ti – an empire to the east of the eastern-most places we saw in the main series, separated from Qarth and the Dothraki Sea by a vast mountain rainge. The other has never been specified, and Martin didn't add any details here. However, he did write: "I still have hopes of presenting the stories that we shelved in another form, perhaps as graphic novels."
These spinoffs would all be based on material from Martin's books, including the main series A Song of Ice and Fire, the "Dunk and Egg" novellas, the encyclopedia-style book The World of Ice and Fire and the fictional history book Fire and Blood. We don't know for sure which projects have been scrapped or "shelved," but we now have confirmation that Nine Voyages is still in development.
As for the shows in production, fans can look forward to House of the Dragon Season 2 premiering in the summer of 2024. The only other spinoff to be greenlit is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, which is filming this year. That is a prequel set about 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones, and is based on the three "Dunk and Egg" novellas.
For now, fans can find all of Martin's stories in his books in print, digital or audiobook formats. Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are streaming now on Max. House of the Dragon Season 2 premiers this summer on HBO and Max.