Now that we’re five seasons deep into Game of Thrones, another George R.R. Martin story may be coming to television: The Skin Trade, Martin’s 1989 novella about a detective trying to solve a gruesome murder case and a collections agent who suffers from lycanthropy.




Over on his blog, Martin has announced that Cinemax has optioned the rights to The Skin Trade and ordered a pilot script. The novella appeared in the horror compilation Night Visions 5 (which has also been released under the title Dark Visions) in 1989, and Martin says he was pitching a Skin Trade TV show way back in 1991. Now it looks like the show may finally happen.

Here’s how Deadline describes the show:

Written by Kalinda Vazquez (Once Upon a Time), the drama, titled Skin Trade, will center on Willie Flambeaux, a collections agent who happens to be a werewolf, and his friend, Randi Wade, a private investigator, who discover a dark secret behind a series of grisly murders in their decaying industrial city.


The Skin Trade has actually been adapted fairly recently, but as a comic book. Avatar Press published a Skin Trade comic series in 2013, written by Martin and Daniel Abraham, with art by Mike Wolfer. The image up top is from one of the comic’s covers, also by Wolfer.

Cinemax Orders SKIN TRADE Script [George R.R. Martin’s Not a Blog]