Game of Thrones creator eyes HBO for new series about a sci-fi novelist

By Rick Marshall April 6, 2015

game-of-thrones-season-3 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

With the fifth season of Game of Thrones premiering in less than a week, creator George R.R. Martin’s fans have a lot to look forward to — including a new series the acclaimed author is developing for HBO.

Along with his work on the next novel in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series that inspired Game of Thrones, Martin is reportedly developing a new television series about a young science-fiction writer during the dawn of the television age in 1949. According to Entertainment Weekly, the series is tentatively titled Captain Cosmos, and will follow an author who “tells stories no one else will dare to tell.”

While the project is still at an early stage, the pilot episode for Captain Cosmos is being penned by Beverly Hills, 90210 and Z Nation writer Michael Cassutt, who also served as a producer on the ’90s series Eerie, Indiana, and the revival of The Outer Limits.

No stranger to television himself, Martin penned several episodes of The Outer Limits during Cassutt’s tenure, and also served as a writer on the ’80s revival of The Twilight Zone anthology series and the celebrated ’90s series Beauty and the Beast. In addition, Martin served as a producer on Beauty and the Beast, which starred Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton as a pair of star-crossed lovers in a modern retelling of the classic tale.

Still, while the idea for Captain Cosmos comes from Martin, the author isn’t expected to take a major role in producing the series due to his commitments to “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Martin recently canceled a series of appearances promoting Game of Thrones in order to work on the sixth novel in the series. The author has indicated that he expects to have the novel, titled The Winds of Winter, published before the premiere of the sixth season of Game of Thrones.

The fifth season of Game of Thrones premieres April 12 at 9pm ET on HBO.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…

Entertainment

HBO cancels controversial Confederate series from Game of Thrones creators

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle (and the television series by Amazon Studios based on it) imagines an alternate version of 1962, with the Axis powers having emerged victorious from World War II. Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss conceptualized a similar series, Confederate, set in a reality where the South won the Civil War after seceding from the Union

That project received the green light from HBO in July 2017, but has now officially been canceled in the aftermath of a massive deal that will have the duo creating TV shows and movies for Netflix.

Entertainment

The Game of Thrones prequel: Everything we know so far

Production has wrapped on the Game of Thrones prequel's pilot

game of thrones prequel series hbo khaleesi dragons

Hold the door! In June 2018, HBO gave the green light to a Game of Thrones prequel pilot from George R.R. Martin -- the author behind A Song of Ice and Fire, the series of books upon which the original show is based -- and screenwriter Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Secret Service).
We now have an idea about when the series will begin production and how long we have to wait until it premieres, as well as some of the new faces that will play roles in it.
More Game of Thrones News

Game of Thrones season 8: Everything we know
Game of Thrones prequels will have bigger budgets than original series
How Zoic’s VFX magic brought winter to Game of Thrones and gave Arya a new face

Entertainment

Game of Thrones: Plotlines from the books that played out differently (or not at all) in the series

Catelyn Stark

Creative liberties are taken with just about any adaptation, and loyalists to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels have long criticized HBO's Game of Thrones for its departures from the show's source material. While there are events that happened in Game of Thrones much differently than they did in the books, there are also a number of occurrences that mirror what Martin originally put to paper.

Even at this late stage of the series, there are some plot points from the books that could potentially still happen. For some, however, the ship has sailed -- and with only two episodes left, they’re unlikely to play out. Nevertheless, we rounded up some of the most interesting plot lines from the books that didn't make the transition from page to screen.