HBO Threatens to Dunk All Its Eggs in the 'Game of Thrones' Basket

In 2010, The Walking Dead may have been both the best and worst thing to ever happen to AMC. It’s the biggest series in the network’s history, but it has also launched so many spinoffs that AMC’s brand is now mostly tied to a dying franchise that, while still occasionally entertaining, is creatively inert. AMC is sinking with its flagship franchise when it could have, instead, followed the trajectory that Breaking Bad and Mad Men set it on.

Likewise, Game of Thrones is one of the biggest series in HBO’s history, and attempts to replicate its success outside of True Detective and The White Lotus have either recently fallen flat (The Regime, The Sympathizer) or blown up on the network (The Idol and any attempt to bring back Euphoria). What’s a network to do, then, other than go back to the well, as it has done with the hugely successful Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon.

Successful though it may be, the second season has shown some slight ratings erosion, but that has not stopped David Zaslav from banking the streamer’s future on a franchise that works, at least until it doesn’t.

To wit: Another Game of Thrones prequel is officially in production. It’s an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight, set a century before the events of Game of Thrones. It is centered on “a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.”

The Hedge Knight is the first of three novellas in the Tales of Dunk and Egg series, and the first season will be six episodes long. Former rugby star Peter Claffey will star as Dunk, nine-year-old Dexter Sol Ansell will play Egg, and the cast also includes Finn Bennett, Bertie Carvel, Tanzyn Crawford, Daniel Ings, and Sam Spruell.

While The Hedge Knight is the only other prequel outside of House of the Dragon that has actually been greenlit to series, there are still other GoT television shows in the works. For example, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eboni Booth is attached to a pilot for Ten Thousand Ships, a series about Princess Nymeria.