Dance of the Dragons Pilot Nears Order

Exclusive word from Entertainment Weekly, who has the scoop that HBO is “nearing a pilot order” for a second prequel, this one with a script written by Ryan Condal (who is noted to be one of several writers who have worked on it). And the subject of that prequel? The Dance of the Dragons, first described in detail in The World of Ice and Fire and then expanded upon in even greater detail in Fire & Blood.

The Dance was the bloody civil war between two Targaryen siblings, Rhaenyra and Aegon II, over the Iron Throne, a civil war marked by murders, betrayals, and (of course) dragons—quite a lot of them, in fact. It’s rich fodder for any story, with some vivid characters and sequences which certainly would fulfill any hopes for fans to see cinematic spectacles on the order of the last seasons of Game of Thrones.

The EW report from James Hibberd is fairly suggestive that this was one of the five original pitches—and the focus on George R.R. Martin being attracted to it (he’s attached as executive producer, but showrunner will likely be Condal) when combined with “several writers” makes it likely that this was the pitch he and Bryan Cogman worked on before Cogman moved on to work on several projects from Amazon (such as serving as consulting producer on Amazon’s forthcoming 2nd Age Middle-earth series), and as I’ve noted in the recent past, my understanding was that even if Cogman had moved on, GRRM and HBO were probably still interested. Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva seems to have confirmed this.

It’s unclear if this means anything regarding the recently-completed pilot (now in post-production) for an Age of Heroes-set series, led by Jane Goldman, which seems to go by the codename Bloodmoon but which George likes to call The Long Night or The Longer Night. A project which, I should note, we’ve been somewhat quiet about because Linda and I have done some consulting work on it (a fact I first mentioned publicly at Eurocon). That said, I can say that I’m not sure it has any particular impact at all, since with HBO’s acquisition by AT&T there’s definitely been signs that there’s been an emphasis on greatly increasing HBO’s original programming and also make use of some of its most popular properties, like Game of Thrones, more heavily. The potential of seeing not one but two Game of Thrones shows seems to be higher, not lower, than it was a year ago.

Interestingly, Condal and GRRM seem to have at least passing familiarity with one another—George’s Jean Cocteau Theatre hosted a screening of Condal’s show Colony, and it seems that this interview with IGN featuring them both took place around then: