What's next for Game of Thrones after season 8?
The Game of Thrones season-eight premiere is almost upon us (Sunday, April 14 in the US, Monday, April 15 in the UK), which means the dragons, double-crossing and pensive facial expressions as the Night King and his fellow White Walkers drift ever closer will soon be a part of TV history, and not something we've been emotionally building towards for what feels like forever.
There won't be a season nine. Let's just clarify that right at the top.
Initially, there were whisperings that the fantasy drama could continue if showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss were on board.
HBO programming president Michael Lombardo previously said at a Television Critics Association summer press tour (via The Wrap) that he hoped the duo would "change their minds" about stopping after season eight – and even George RR Martin himself said that there was plenty of scope to commit to more.
"We could have gone to 11, 12, 13 seasons," he told Variety at the Emmys back in 2018.
"But I guess they wanted a life... If you've read my novels, you know there was enough material for more seasons I think. They made certain cuts... But that's fine. There was a period where they were saying seven seasons, and I was saying 10 seasons and... they won.
George R. R. Martin wanted to keep 'Game of Thrones' going - 'We could have gone to 11, 12, 13 seasons' #Emmys
(via @Variety)pic.twitter.com/SFyPoQ4lzF- Fandom (@getFANDOM) September 17, 2018
Eventually, it was neither seven nor 10, but eight.
It's official: @GameOfThrones will return for its six-episode, eighth and final season in 2019.
- HBO PR (@HBOPR) January 4, 2018
During an interview with Deadline, Benioff and Weiss explained why they felt that was the perfect point at which to wrap everything up for good.
"We want to leave while all the people watching this show are really into it," said Weiss. "Get out at a high point and not have it be, well thank God that’s over."
Benioff added: "It's not just trying not to outstay your welcome. We're trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end.
"The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it's not supposed to be an ongoing show where every season it's trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it.
"We wanted something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story."
But of course, this isn't strictly the end. There's one spin-off, or prequel as Martin likes to call it, currently in the works and four more pilot scripts in development.
The greenlit series is reportedly called The Long Night – though Martin did say on his blog that it "is officially untitled" at the moment – and is apparently a White Walker origin story set thousands of years before Game of Thrones as we currently know it.
The teaser synopsis reads: "Only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros' history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend, it's not the story we think we know."
None of the current cast are set to feature, and fans can instead expect to see Naomi Watts (Twin Peaks, King Kong) as "a charismatic socialite with a hidden secret" and Joshua Whitehouse (Poldark), alongside the following:
Naomi Ackie (Star Wars: Episode IX), Denise Gough (Colette, Apple Tree Yard), Jamie Campbell Bower (The Twilight Saga, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), Sheila Atim (Harlots), Ivanno Jeremiah (Humans), Georgie Henley (The Chronicles of Narnia), Alex Sharp (How to Talk to Girls at Parties), and Toby Regbo (Medici: The Magnificent, The Last Kingdom, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald).
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about what fans can expect, Martin said:
"Westeros is a very different place. There’s no King’s Landing. There’s no Iron Throne. There are no Targaryens - Valyria has hardly begun to rise yet with its dragons and the great empire that it built.
"We’re dealing with a different and older world [around 5,000 years ago] and hopefully that will be part of the fun of the series."
Screenwriter Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, Kingsman) is also on board as showrunner.
Martin did also previously say that there are five scripts in development, but HBO's programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter that they are very much testing the waters with The Long Night before they commit to any more.
"[Game of Thrones is] a great world and great IP," he said. "We're going to do the pilot, see how it goes. Is it possible we do another one? Maybe.
"But I don't want HBO to become a network that airs just Game of Thrones or Game of Thrones prequels. What we're doing is a much more diversified slate so that we're not in a position that we have to get the Game of Thrones franchise up and running or the lights are going out at HBO. That is not the situation and it never has been.
"I do think it would be crazy not to try the prequel and to see what else is out there [...] but we want to be careful not to overdo it."
Bloys added: "No other plans to pick up anything else until we get that one going and then we'll think about if there's any other one that we want to make.
"We really just want to get this one going, get it off to pilot and then we'll think about other options."
There is also Spear Carriers, another spin-off idea which Martin is interested in developing, which would be set during the events of Game of Thrones but would focus on the 'regular folk' living in the Seven Kingdoms.
In the terms of the books, it's already common knowledge that the TV adaptation has long outpaced the written source material, so much so that Martin doesn't even know what's going to happen in the series finale.
"Obviously, I wished I finished these books sooner so the show hadn’t gotten ahead of me. I never anticipated that," he told Entertainment Weekly.
"I haven’t read the [final-season] scripts and haven’t been able to visit the set because I’ve been working on Winds [of Winter].
"I know some of the things. But there’s a lot of minor-character [arcs] they’ll be coming up with on their own. And, of course, they passed me several years ago. There may be important discrepancies."
There is still no publication date for the sixth book in his 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series, The Winds of Winter, which is currently eight years in the making – and he's also planning a seventh, titled A Dream of Spring.
His last book, A Dance With Dragons, was published back in 2011 and includes the death of Jon Snow, which took place on our screens in the 2015 season-five finale.
Martin added: "It’s the end for a lot of people. It’s not the end for me. I’m still deeply in it. I better live a long time because I have a lot of work left to do."
Benioff discussed the the difference in timescale between the books and the TV series, and how that was taken into account so as not to ruin the saga for fans.
"[The concern] used to be that the books would spoil the show for people - and luckily it did not for the most part," he told EW. "Now that the show is ahead of the books, it seems the show could ruin the books for people.
"So one thing we’ve talked to George about is that we’re not going to tell people what the differences are (the heartbreaking reveal about Hodor's past emerged from a discussion between Benioff, Weiss and Martin), so when those books come out people can experience them fresh."
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