With the hype train fully restarted for House of the Dragon Season 2 thanks to the first footage and some early praise from George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones fans are able to earnestly look forward to returning to the fantastical universe. Beyond HOTD, multiple other spinoffs are in varying stages of development through HBO, though without a whole lot of updates to hinge expectations on.
But with his final blog post of 2023, Martin actually did provide the latest on the previously revealed animated projects. Amusingly enough, the reveal just so happened to be buried in heaping praise for one of Netflix’s most recent animated shows, the highly acclaimed Blue Eye Samurai. (A bit more on that lower.) With the topic of animation at hand, Martin then shared this about the current state of upcoming Game of Thrones projects outside of live-action:
As it happens, HBO and I have our own animated projects, set in the world of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE. None of them have been greenlit yet, but I think we are getting close to taking the next step with a couple of them. When this last round of development started a few years back, we had four ideas for animated shows, with some great talents attached. Writers rooms and summits, outline and scripts followed in due course… but, alas, two of the original projects were subsequently shelved.
The author did go on to say that even those shelved projects may come to life in other ways, “perhaps as graphic novels,” so diehard fans may well indeed enjoy those stories in the future. Of course, even that kind of unofficial update should be taken with a grain of salt, since Martin has a way of talking about written projects that end up permanently affixed to the horizon. (See: the still unfinished Winds of Winter novel, which fans have started to give up on.)
He continued, shining light on one project’s transition from live-action to animation:
Work on the other two animated projects continues apace, however…and meanwhile, we have moved NINE VOYAGES, our series about the legendary voyages of the Sea Snake, over from live action to animation. A move I support fully. 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.
With both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon known to be among the most expensive TV shows ever produced, I can certainly understand the instinct to take the more cost-effective route whenever possible for whatever projects make it past the script development process.
Sure, a large-scale concept like Nine Voyages would probably be better in live-action, but if the choice is between an animated series or nothing at all, beggars can't be choosers. Assuming anything beyond House of the Dragon comes to fruition.
In early November, HBO boss Casey Bloys shared his own update, saying that nothing from the world of Game of Thrones was “close to a green light” at the time. But even that could have been a way to detract from too many follow-up questions about anything that was nearing an official thumbs up.
It sounds like George R.R. Martin might push for one or more of the three in-development shows to land the same animation studio as Netflix's Blue Eye Samurai, as he and wife and Parris McBride are apparently huge fans of the action series, which boasts Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, George Takei amidst a larger ensemble of A+ voice talent. He goes so far as to recommend it to fans of his own work, even though the similarities are more thematic than anything else.
For audiences who can't wait for Season 2, House of the Dragon's first ten episodes can be streamed with a Max subscription, along with the entire run of Game of Thrones, while a Netflix subscription is needed to catch Blue Eye Samurai's first season.
