HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, wrapped up its second season earlier this month. The series isn’t expected to return with its third — and apparently penultimate — season until 2026, meaning that viewers may have another two whole years to wait before they finally get to see House of the Dragon start delivering on some of the major moments that it has spent its first 18 episodes setting up. That doesn’t, however, mean that Game of Thrones fans will have to wait two years to return to the franchise’s fictional fantasy world.
On the contrary, HBO has a number of other Thrones spinoffs in development in addition to House of the Dragon season 3, including one that is filming right now. It may not, in other words, be long before viewers get to start making a lot more frequent return trips to Westeros, as well as the seas and lands that surround it.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2025)
To date, HBO has only begun filming one of its other, long-in-development Game of Thrones spinoffs. The series in question is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is set around 80 years after the events of House of the Dragon and around 90 years before Game of Thrones begins. Based on Thrones author George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, the show will follow “Dunk,” aka Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), a hedge knight (i.e., a wandering warrior not sworn to one master), as he journeys across the Seven Kingdoms in search of employment and recognition. Along the way, he joins up with a young squire, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), whose connection to Westeros’ Targaryen dynasty isn’t immediately clear to Dunk.
The series’ six-episode first season will be run by House of the Dragon writer Ira Parker and directed by Black Mirror filmmaker Owen Harris and Sarah Adina Smith. It’s expected to premiere on HBO in 2025 and promises to be a smaller production than both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones. That should not only help it stand out from its franchise’s other installments, but also make it easier for the series to return with new seasons — should it be renewed — on a more regular basis than House of the Dragon.
Aegon’s Conquest (TBA)
In February, it was reported by The Hollywood Reporter that HBO had begun “actively” developing a new Game of Thrones prequel series centered around Aegon the Conqueror’s conquest of Westeros. The legacy of that military campaign, which resulted in the union of six of Westeros’ eventual seven kingdoms, looms large over the events of both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the latter of which depicts the beginning of the end 0f the Targaryen dynasty that Aegon the Conqueror and his sister wives installed.
It’s said that HBO’s interest in the prequel increased once the network began to work on it with The Batman Part II co-writer Mattson Tomlin. HBO hasn’t publicly acknowledged the prequel series since this initial report was released, so it’s unclear whether or not it’s even happening. Ever since it was announced that HBO was interested in producing Game of Thrones spinoffs, though, Aegon’s Conquest is a story that fans have frequently named as one of the most obvious subjects of a potential show.
It isn’t, therefore, surprising that an Aegon’s Conquest prequel is in development. Whether it’ll ever actually come to fruition is another matter altogether and remains to be seen.
Nine Voyages/Sea Snake (TBA)
HBO has been reportedly developing a House of the Dragon prequel titled Nine Voyages for several years now. The project is said to depict the nine naval voyages taken by Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) that helped elevate him to a powerful status within the Game of Thrones franchise’s fictional world in the decades leading up to the start of House of the Dragon. It’s these nine voyages that also earned Corlys the same moniker as his legendary ship, Sea Snake. Corlys’ adventures have been hinted at and alluded to throughout House of the Dragon‘s first two seasons, but viewers have so far seen very little of his naval prowess. Nine Voyages would potentially rectify that.
George R.R. Martin announced last year that Nine Voyages had transformed in its ongoing development due to production limitations from a live-action prequel to an animated series. “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,” Martin wrote. “There’s a whole world out there. And we have a lot better chance of showing it all with animation.” It has been reported that a pilot script was written for the series by The Mentalist creator Bruno Heller, but it’s unclear whether HBO has chosen to move forward with that version of Nine Voyages or not.
The same is true of the series itself, which remains in the same ambiguous developmental state as many of HBO’s other Thrones prequels and spinoffs. The fact that it has managed to consistently stick around over the past few years, however, suggests that it may ultimately have a better shot of premiering one day than others.
Ten Thousand Ships (TBA)
Ten Thousand Ships is a Game of Thrones prequel that has been in development at HBO since as far back as 2017. Set nearly 1,000 years before the events of Thrones, the project explores the origins of Dorne and, specifically, the journey that the legendary warrior-queen Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar led when she and her people were forced out of their homeland by the Valyrians. It’s said that Nymeria assembled a fleet of 10,000 ships to carry her people across the sea in search of a new home, which would eventually become the region of Dorne.
A pilot for Ten Thousand Ships was originally written by L.A. Confidential and Man on Fire writer Brian Helgeland, who told Inverse in April that the project hadn’t been “picked up yet” by HBO. Following Helgeland’s contribution, it was reported that screenwriter Amanda Segel had been hired to write a new pilot script for the project, and George R.R. Martin revealed in March 2022 that Segel had delivered “a couple drafts of that one, and we are forging ahead.” It’s unclear what came of Segel’s vision for Ten Thousand Ships, though, as Martin also claimed in June of this year that playwright Eboni Booth was “working on a new pilot” for the project that he and HBO were “very excited about.”
Like Nine Voyages, Ten Thousand Ships has seemingly survived a few different permutations without being permanently shelved. That seems like a strong indication of HBO’s level of interest in it, but given the epic scale of its story, it would also represent some major logistical challenges. Only time will tell whether or not it actually has a future on the small screen.
The Golden Empire (TBA)
In 2021, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that HBO had begun developing three animated projects set within the world of Game of Thrones. It was noted that one of them was rumored to be about the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, which is essentially the Game of Thrones world’s version of Imperial China. It wasn’t featured in Thrones, nor has it been visited yet in House of the Dragon or Martin’s main Song of Ice and Fire books. Nonetheless, in 2022, Martin confirmed that a Yi Ti-set animated project was in active development and that the working title for it was The Golden Empire.
Since then, very little has been revealed about the project, including whether it’s still in contention for a future spotin HBO or Max’s originals lineups. In late 2023, Martin notably revealed that two of the four animated Thrones spinoffs that had been originally pitched to HBO had since been shelved, but he hasn’t yet announced whether The Golden Empire was one of them.
Snow (Canceled)
Much to everyone’s surprise, it was reported in 2022 that Kit Harington and HBO had begun developing a Game of Thrones sequel series about the future adventures of Harington’s Thrones character, Jon Snow. Reportedly titled Snow, the project remains the only Thrones spinoff HBO has developed that would be set after the events of that monumental TV series. That fact alone, along with Harington’s reported involvement, immediately made Snow one of the most interesting Thrones-related projects that HBO has considered to date. Unfortunately, Snow has been indefinitely shelved.
Harington confirmed as much earlier this year and recently opened up about the project’s apparent demise in an interview with GQ. “We spent a couple of years back-and-forth developing it. And it just didn’t … nothing got us excited enough,” Harington revealed. “In the end, I kind of backed out and said, ‘I think if we push this any further and keep developing it, we could end up with something that’s not good. And that’s the last thing we all want.’”
Taking all of this into account, the chances of Snow ever making it past a developmental phase seem slim, but stranger things have happened. For now, though, viewers definitely shouldn’t expect to see it on their television screens anytime soon.
Game of Thrones seasons 1-8 and House of the Dragon seasons 1-2 are streaming now on Max.
