One of the great success stories in cable television has been HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on the novels of writer George R.R. Martin. For several years there has been talk of spin-off series, with the first — a prequel titled House of the Dragon — and now there’s news that HBO Max, Warner Bros.’ streaming service that is determined to be competitive with Disney+, has put an animated series into development.
According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, unlike the Jurassic World CG Netflix series, Camp Cretaceous, this one will definitely not be geared towards children, instead appealing to an audience that watched the live action show. Martin is supposed to be working with Francesca Orsi, the head of drama at HBO, to develop the show.
In an interview with England’s The Guardian, Martin commented on how Game of Thrones came about, first from a fascination with comic books and then a deeper love for the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. “I discovered Batman and Superman,” he explained. “Now those were stories, they were having adventures all sorts of amazing things could happen. [Then] Tolkien blew my mind. Tolkien had an enormous influence on me, but after Tolkien there was a dark period in the history of epic fantasy where there were a lot of Tolkien imitations coming out that were terrible. I didn’t necessarily want to be associated with those books, which just seemed to me to be imitating the worst things of Tolkien and not capturing any of the great things.”
In 1991 the opening chapter of Game of Thrones appeared in his mind. As he admitted, “When I began, I didn’t know what the hell I had. I thought it might be a short story; it was just this chapter, where they find these direwolf pups. Then I started exploring those families and the world started coming alive. It was all there in my head; I couldn’t not write it.”