Critical praise, ratings, and award statues are great, but in the 21st century, no film or TV show has truly succeeded until it has a porn parody. Ninja Turtles and Simpsons, Sponge Bob, Star Wars: if it’s an even modestly successful bit of intellectual property, you can bet the adult-film industry has re-interpreted it to the fullest extent fair-use law will allow. But perhaps no mainstream franchise is more ripe for the XXX treatment than Game of Thrones, currently king atop the appointment-viewing heap. Since it’s 2011 debut, the show has already engendered at least three capital-A Adult knockoffs, an output befitting the HBO show’s heady mix of fantasy, politics, violence, and copious sex. To date, viewers left wanting content even more explicit than TV-MA have had the option of Game of Bones (WoodRocket.com, 2013), This Ain’t No Game of Thrones XXX (Hustler, 2014), and Gay of Thrones (Men.com, 2014). This is to say nothing of the countless amateur efforts out there; think people in Renaissance-fair costumes fighting with plastic swords and then winding up on a blue couch in a midcentury split-level home.

Despite these previous offerings, this spring Brazzers, the Luxembourg-based adult-film studio, is aiming to lay waste to the porn kingdom’s other houses with its own (relatively) big-budget epic, Storm of Kings XXX Parody. To up the competitive ante, the company is taking the project in some creative directions usually alien in the porn world. About 8 to 10 minutes of each 35- to 40-minute episode is dedicated to story line, which, in the industry, is substantial. The production will have several battle sequences. And, thanks to ample C.G.I., the episodes feature a dragon—but not like that.

“The fans can expect to see some decapitation,” says Brazzers product director Mario Nardstein. The project was given what Nardstein calls a “flexible budget.” He won’t release specific numbers, but did offer that the range for a typical Brazzers shoot is $10,000 to $20,000, and for a high-profile project is $100,000 to $1 million. By comparison, James Hibberd reported in Entertainment Weekly that each episode in Season 6 of Game of Thrones costs about $10 million. So far it’s paid off. The first episode of Storm of Kings, which premiered April 24, performed about 20 percent better than a typical release on the site does, according to Nardstein.

To a certain degree, a pornography studio makes parodies for the same reason anyone does: to ride the coattails of a mega-hit’s massive viewership. Making parodies also helps a studio stand out among the data-plan-busting amount of porn available today. Parodies are “the only things that sell on DVD anymore,” explains Storm of Kings writer and director Dick Bush. “People buy Batman v Superman XXX because they want to show their friends, ‘Hey look what I found!’ Because it’s funny. ‘There’s a porno with SpongeBob SquarePants? I have to own it!’”