‘Bloodmoon’: Everything about the ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoffs

HBO’s eight seasons of Game of Thrones finally wrapped. After four solid, engaging seasons, three fan-fiction quality seasons, and one final hot mess of a season, we were hyped to send D&D on their way to Disney to help drive yet another stake through a franchise’s heart: this time, Star Wars’s.

Even though GoT became an international joke that drove some to drink, with fans petitioning to remake the show with more competent writers, people still have a prurient interest in the spinoff shows set in the world of George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire coming down the pike.

Here’s everything we know so far.

5 writers tried – and 4 writers failed – to set HBO’s world on fire

Rumor has it Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class), Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale), Carly Wray (Mad Men), and GoT writer Bryan Cogman were given a stab at writing scripts for Bloodmoon (working title).

So far, HBO has only given the greenlight to Jane Goldman (Kingsmen), who has an impressive resume to pique the interest of any fandom fanboy or -girl. She’s adapted the work of Neil Gaiman, written scripts for Tim Burton, and worked on X-Men. She wrote the Kick-Ass franchise and is the brain behind the Kingsman movies.

Goldman got her start as a journalist and is an X-Files stan who wrote a bestselling book on the series. Anyone familiar with her work will know her scripts are anchored by a strong sense of humor, and as an English ex-journalist, she possesses strong writing pedigree.

There will be more shows happening tho

Be calm, child of summer: dragon daddy George R.R. Martin has promised that other spinoff projects are still in development. “We started with four, and eventually went to five. One of those has been shelved, I am given to understand, and of course Jane’s pilot is now moving to film. But that does not mean the others are dead.

“Three more Game of Thrones prequels, set in different periods and featuring different characters and storylines, remain in active development. Everything I am told indicates that we could film at least one more pilot, and maybe more than one, in the years to come. We do have an entire world and tens of thousands of years of history to play with, after all. But this is television, so nothing is certain.”

Producers D&D (Weiss & Benioff) won’t be involved

You can breathe a sigh of relief now, Martin fan! D&D are (probably) too busy to be involved in GoT spinoffs, swimming as they are in the buckets of cash from Disney. They’re going to be listed as executive producers on the project: a Hollywood money thing meaning they’ll take a percentage of earnings from the project based on their Thrones deal with HBO.

The production budget for the spinoff is all about those benjamins

According to HBO’s Senior VP of drama Francesca Orsi:

“$50 million (per season) would never fly for what we are trying to do. We are going big.” No need to boast, Franny.

We won’t be seeing Jon Snow . . . won’t even freakin’ bump into him

The spinoff is taking things way back to the old school: literally thousands of years before Game of Thrones. We’re going to find out all types of creepy, nasty things about the underbelly of the history of Westeros such as: the origin story of the White Walkers, the history of House Stark, and the mysteries of the East.

Our boy George R.R. Martin is calling this spinoff The Long Night (despite objections from HBO) and alludes to an event that happened when the First Men and the White Walkers had their first nasty run-in. Uplifting stuff.

Janey E. Jones (a.k.a. Naomi Watts) heads up the cast

Yup, that’s right: our fave Twin Peaks character actress Naomi Watts is going to headline the cast of the GoT spinoff. We’re pumped she’s finally going to be able to get the stain that was the Netflix abomination Gypsy down the list of her otherwise impeccable CV. (The disaster is currently sitting way too close to the top of her iMDB page). HBO says she’ll be “a charismatic socialite hiding a dark secret”.

HBO is keeping the budget down with the rest of the cast

In typical HBO style, the network has rounded out the rest of the cast with relative unknowns who will surely help keep that billion-dollar budget in check. It includes:

Josh Whitehouse (Poldark), Naomi Ackie (Lady Macbeth, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), Denise Gough (Monday), Jamie Campbell Bower (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), Sheila Atim (Harlots), Ivanno Jeremiah (Humans), Georgie Henley (The Chronicles of Narnia films), Alex Sharp (How to Talk to Girls at Parties), and Toby Regbo (The Last Kingdom, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald).

In a break from Game of Thrones tradition, the production team will not be a sausage party

Probably after listening to the world and its sister complain about sexism for the past eight years, HBO has listened up. As well as having a female writer, the pilot will be directed by a woman: S.J. Clarkson. She’s worked on The Defenders, Jessica Jones, HBO’s Succession, and an upcoming Star Trek project. Let’s not get too excited though: we’ve only got confirmation that she’ll be directing the pilot, not further episodes.

Our boy George R.R. Martin isn’t really involved

George is getting on in years; we really want our literary hero to be able to enjoy some of those fat wads of cash he’s made in the past 20 years. But after judging by the shlock that has been Game of Thrones seasons five through eight, we’re a little worried about this one.

We do know Martin had some very vague ideas about the Planetos of that time period that he shared with Goldman, who has proven herself to be a skilled writer and a hit-maker.

From the gruesome twosome that is D&D, Benioff is by far the more experienced of terror twins, but his previous performances at the box office have been spotty to say the least. (Just check out Troy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Rotten Tomatoes). We’re more confident that Goldman can bring some of her Kick-Ass genius to what is now a very tired and trope-laden franchise without their baggage.

We’re going to have to wait for a second to see the Bloodmoon

According to HBO, we’ll probably not see the first GoT spinoff till 2021, even though we know the pilot is currently shooting now. We also know that Bloodmoon is only a temporary title. We think it’s pretty good, though.

What does HBO have to say about it all?

“From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’s history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend, only one thing is for sure: It’s not the story we think we know.”

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If you don’t feel like jumping back 8000 years to an extra-depressing time in Westeros’s history, here are our ideas for GoT spinoffs that we’re currently pitching to HBO. Enjoy.