Whether you call it The Long Night or Age of Heroes or Unnamed Game of Thrones Prequel Number One, we’ll be getting a follow-up to HBO’s mega-hit sometime in the next couple of years.

Although it’s gotten quite a bit of buzz, we still don’t know much about the prequel show beyond the slight synopsis HBO has given us:

Taking place thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: 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 … it’s not the story we think we know.

Exactly how many thousands of years before the main series is the prequel set? Speaking to Deadline at the Television Critics Association press tour, HBO programming president Casey Bloys talked about how The Long Night will stand out from its predecessor:

[Showrunner] Jane [Goldman] did not go into [writing the pilot] wanting to answer anything about Game of Thrones; it was the story that spoke to her. It will feel very different because it’s 8,000 years before, it’s a very different setting, a very different time in Westeros, It will feel different but still Game of Thrones.

That’s the challenge HBO is facing at the moment: how do you create a successor to a hugely successful show like Game of Thrones that still feels enough like the original to bring in fans but different enough so it has its own identity? Goldman, the screenwriter behind movies like Kick-Ass and X-Men: Days of Future Past, may be able to help by bringing a different perspective. For years, the Game of Thrones writers room has consisted of four dudes: David Benioff, Dan Weiss, Bryan Cogman and Dave Hill. Will giving the reins to a woman make a difference? Getting specific, Deadline wondered if the show would have a female lead. Said Bloys:

There are very strong female characters but it’s an ensemble, there [are] men and women. Jane is a very good writer, we don’t want to limit her to writing female leads. There are a lot of very complicated leads in [the pilot].

In other words, it’ll be like Game of Thrones, which has a rich ensemble cast featuring both men and women. I think that’s the way it should be.

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