Prequel Discussion

[lancerman]

The only two that I think have a chance of being a success are Robert's Rebellion or the Conquest. Mainly because both are multilayered epics in scale. The Rebellion has the advantage of having strong ties to the original series and built care for the characters. Ned, Robert, Tywin, Jamie, etc. And while the major points will be hit on in the current show, there are plenty of interesting gaps to fill in. You can probably keep this going up to the Greyjoy Rebellion. 

The conquest resets the table a bit, but it's pretty standard. Older Westeros being taken over by Dragonlords. The forging of the Iron Throne. Could work but it's mostly going to be dragons dominating everyone. It isn't really even a contest until Dorne, which is whatever.

[RhaenysBee]

11 hours ago, Byfort of Corfe said:

Not too boring, I've never read Dunk and Egg but I hear that they are novellas and I guess that there are three of them, that doesn't sound like nearly enough story to fill more than one season.  And GoT is an expensive production, building sets and acquiring locations and doing the location shooting for just a season of maybe 10 episodes doesn't sound viable to me.  BTW, way off topic but I would really be good with another Master and Commander movie.

They have a lot of money from GoT and if they are going to do a spinoff and keep it cheap they will want to go the for the only dragon CGI option which happens to be Robert's Rebellion. 

They could potentially make it last two to three short seasons if they want to stretch it (which HBO will definitely want to do $_$) but in all honesty a six episode mini series would be the quality choice to make. 

[dsug]

I could see 13 episodes for Robert's Rebellion, 13 episodes for the Dance of the Dragons, 13 episodes for the Conquest, etc. 

Just flesh out westeros and it's history, almost like anthologies. And when it's all said and done, we could watch from the beginning of the seven kingdoms all the way thru the end. 

[RhaenysBee]

25 minutes ago, dsug said:

I could see 13 episodes for Robert's Rebellion, 13 episodes for the Dance of the Dragons, 13 episodes for the Conquest, etc. 

Just flesh out westeros and it's history, almost like anthologies. And when it's all said and done, we could watch from the beginning of the seven kingdoms all the way thru the end. 

I like this idea, but I would still only tune in for the Robert's Rebellion and maybe the Conquest seasons. 

[dsug]

3 hours ago, RhaenysB said:

I like this idea, but I would still only tune in for the Robert's Rebellion and maybe the Conquest seasons. 

That's fine. 

I for one would give a kidney for a Dance series, so I'll agree to disagree

[RhaenysBee]

20 minutes ago, dsug said:

That's fine. 

I for one would give a kidney for a Dance series, so I'll agree to disagree

Agreeing to disagree is the best kind of agreement  

Spoiler

Frankly I don't even know what Dance of the dragons is. Other than some famous targ vs targ war...  

Spoiler

This is embarrassing. 

Spoiler

And I'm not even interested in the details. 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[dsug]

41 minutes ago, RhaenysB said:

Agreeing to disagree is the best kind of agreement  

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Frankly I don't even know what Dance of the dragons is. Other than some famous targ vs targ war...  

  Hide contents

This is embarrassing. 

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And I'm not even interested in the details. 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

oooo ur missing out! it's basically sister v brother for their father's throne. there's a whole 20 minute thing on it in the histories and lore things HBO puts out. 

[Byfort of Corfe]

On ‎3‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 4:00 AM, Ser Walter of AShwood said:

The Hedge Knight is 160 pages, the Sworn sword and the Mystery Knight aren't that much shorter.
The Hobbit is 300 pages, and Peter Jackson managed to create 3 movies with a total length of 8hours and 20 minutes.

Seems to me like there is plenty of material to work with, especially if we are added some 'extra scenes' of the tournament(s), castles and lords hanging around. Now, I agree that a Dunk and Egg series would be a bad idea, but the books do lend themselves for 3 2-hour movies.
You could create a complete WOIAF franchise if you really wanted.

Movies:

• Dunk and Egg stories
• She Wolves of Winterfell
• Doom of Valyria
• The Rise and Fall of Qarth
• Asshai
• Lan the Clever (aka Lannisters slithering into Casterly rock)
• The Kings of Winter
• The first Stormkings
• Westeros lands pre-conquest (perhaps 7 movies, where each one focusses on a single kingdom)
• The Reynes of Castamere (but only after the miniseries on Tywin leaving Kingslanding)
• Greyjoy Rebellion (after the miniseries about RR of course)

Miniseries:

• Aegons Conquest
• Bloodravens actions (you know, killing a blackfyre, being banned to the wall, becoming LC, leaving for the cave)
• Tywin vs Aegon (what caused Tywin to resign as hand and leave KL)
• Events leading up to Roberts Rebellion
• Roberts Rebellion

Other suggestions (either miniseries or movie):

• The invasion of the Andals
• The events leading up to the pact between COTF and Men

I'm sure I missed a couple of very nice stories.
Heck, with all the material and backstory we have, we could create a larger franchise then the Marvel Universe (and with a better storyline).

_{Edit: Added some more options}

 

 

HBO isn't even certain about doing a prequel.  They would like to but have made it clear that they need the right property and the right people attached and so far they don't have either.  My guess frankly is that we will never see a prequel.  Now it is true that GRRM has stated that a TV adaptation of Dunk and Egg was being discussed but (and it's a big but) that was back in 2014.  Nothing has been announced since.  HBO does evidently own the rights to the "Westeros locale" (GRRM's words not mine).  Anything like GoT is likely to be very expensive to produce and therefor HBO is going to want to have what they would consider a hit before proceeding. 

 

Having said that the D&E people aren't going to get the RR people to change their minds and vice versa.

[Angel Eyes]

Well, I think Robert's Rebellion will be more appealing, since it deals with characters the audience already knows, and there's no need for dragons, giants, direwolves, or white walkers, so the CGI budget will be smaller.

[Byfort of Corfe]

12 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

Well, I think Robert's Rebellion will be more appealing, since it deals with characters the audience already knows, and there's no need for dragons, giants, direwolves, or white walkers, so the CGI budget will be smaller.

Definitely fewer CGI effects, that lowers the cost. Plus unlike D&E and GoT they don't have to wait for GRRM to finish writing the series

[Angel Eyes]

So where should they start? Harrenhal?

[Byfort of Corfe]

1 hour ago, Angel Eyes said:

So where should they start? Harrenhal?

Probably as good a starting point as any.

[dsug]

I love the idea of a series about the life of Maegor the Cruel. The craziness, the dragons, the Black Brides, the mysterious death. It would be creepy and awesome. 

[Ser Yorick Ampersand]

The only way I would ever watch a SOIAF spin-off is if it was a totally fan fiction show without ever mentioning characters from the main story or other publicked stories(novellas etc). I has to be totally unrelated to the books and show.

The only thing they should use is the setting/world-building and get some writers to make up characters from scratch. They could use existing houses but in a timeline we know nothing about that is canon. 

 

[Newstar]

There's a thread on this in the GOT news section, so here are my thoughts from that thread:

Dunk & Egg wouldn't work. Insufficiently high stakes and different tone from GOT (a rambling picaresque lacking GOT's urgency), no big battles or dragons (part of the Game-of-Thrones-by-HBO brand), insufficiently interesting characters. Prequels that are slightly lighter in tone can work really well (Better Call Saul vs. Breaking Bad), but there needs to be audience buy-in (preferably through characters carrying over from one show to the other). Also, it would encounter the same problem as GOT: it would run out of source material, and much more quickly than GOT did.

Robert's Rebellion might work as a miniseries, but there's not enough material there for an ongoing series, which is what I suspect HBO is after.

The Dance of the Dragons wouldn't work, either. GOT has to ration out the dragons to a few measly appearances every season. The CGI for the dragon battles alone would beggar the production.

 

More generally, I think the problem is that HBO doesn't particularly want Dunk & Egg, the Dance of the Dragons, or Robert's Rebellion. They want more GOT. If HBO could keep GOT going for 15 seasons and stretch it out The Walking Dead-style, they would. Fortunately, they lost that battle with D&D. I wouldn't be surprised if HBO tries to throw buckets of money at the actors playing whichever main characters survive in the end to try to tempt them to come back for a sequel.

If HBO can't have GOT, the suits probably want what GOT has established as its brand: apocalyptic magical conflict, high-stakes political intrigue, compelling characters, dragons (in manageable amounts they can pay for), big battles (in manageable amounts they can pay for), badass female characters TV critics can write thinkpieces about, and quotable lines. Dunk & Egg, the Dance of the Dragons, and Robert's Rebellion are sorely lacking on most of these. The Dance of the Dragons comes closest, but frankly, the players involved seem like a bunch of shortsighted assholes who wouldn't warrant much audience sympathy. My takeaway from The Princess and the Queen was that the Targs deserved to lose their dragons and be destroyed as a dynasty, and I know a number of readers came away with the same impression. Not much to root for there.

The other problem is that if you remove the dragons and magic altogether by doing Dunk & Egg or even Robert's Rebellion, all that's left is a story set in medieval times with nothing other than the GOT brand to distinguish it from, say, Vikings or other shows, and there's no shortage of shows set in medieval times thanks in part to the success of GOT. GOT really is a victim of its own success in that sense, because it has spawned a host of imitators which wouldn't be all that different from a dragonless, magicless story set in the GOT world.

[Byfort of Corfe]

7 hours ago, Newstar said:

 

If HBO can't have GOT, the suits probably want what GOT has established as its brand: apocalyptic magical conflict, high-stakes political intrigue, compelling characters, dragons (in manageable amounts they can pay for), big battles (in manageable amounts they can pay for), badass female characters TV critics can write thinkpieces about, and quotable lines. Dunk & Egg, the Dance of the Dragons, and Robert's Rebellion are sorely lacking on most of these. The Dance of the Dragons comes closest, but frankly, the players involved seem like a bunch of shortsighted assholes who wouldn't warrant much audience sympathy. My takeaway from The Princess and the Queen was that the Targs deserved to lose their dragons and be destroyed as a dynasty, and I know a number of readers came away with the same impression. Not much to root for there.

The other problem is that if you remove the dragons and magic altogether by doing Dunk & Egg or even Robert's Rebellion, all that's left is a story set in medieval times with nothing other than the GOT brand to distinguish it from, say, Vikings or other shows, and there's no shortage of shows set in medieval times thanks in part to the success of GOT. GOT really is a victim of its own success in that sense, because it has spawned a host of imitators which wouldn't be all that different from a dragonless, magicless story set in the GOT world.

Then probably we are looking the wrong way, perhaps what HBO wants/needs is a sequel, not a prequel.  The characters are already established (assuming the Night King doesn't win).  A sequel allows whatever happens to be open ended.  You still presumably have magic/dragons.  If it's too expensive to attach whoever survives, Emilia Clarke or Kit Harrington or Sophie Turner or whoever you just start it ten or twenty years after GoT ends with new actors playing Dany and Jon and Sansa and the rest.  Alexandre Dumas did that with the 3 Musketeers, their sequel is entitled "Twenty Years After" and heck, he didn't even have to pay his characters.  You can add in new characters as necessary, the sons and daughters of whoever survives.  It allows the audience to have an ongoing relationship with the story at the same time that you are building a new canon.  It also allows you to go post-post-apocalyptic.  Undoubtedly Westeros will be pretty beaten up by the various wars, ten or fifteen years allow it to heal. 

[Pink Fat Rast]

7 hours ago, Newstar said:

Robert's Rebellion might work as a miniseries, but there's not enough material there for an ongoing series, which is what I suspect HBO is after.

But PLEASE not with Ned Patrick Harris! As someone who generally highly approves of most things the last seasons as far as delivery (of its questionable material) goes - I think Euron is great as a kind of asshole Daario even if he's nothing like the book version - the casting of young Ned is just so BIZARRE.

Actor's alright and his Ned impression isn't even bad, but just no. And especially not a whole series with him in the lead role.

[Angel Eyes]

2 hours ago, Byfort of Corfe said:

Then probably we are looking the wrong way, perhaps what HBO wants/needs is a sequel, not a prequel.  The characters are already established (assuming the Night King doesn't win).  A sequel allows whatever happens to be open ended.  You still presumably have magic/dragons.  If it's too expensive to attach whoever survives, Emilia Clarke or Kit Harrington or Sophie Turner or whoever you just start it ten or twenty years after GoT ends with new actors playing Dany and Jon and Sansa and the rest.  Alexandre Dumas did that with the 3 Musketeers, their sequel is entitled "Twenty Years After" and heck, he didn't even have to pay his characters.  You can add in new characters as necessary, the sons and daughters of whoever survives.  It allows the audience to have an ongoing relationship with the story at the same time that you are building a new canon.  It also allows you to go post-post-apocalyptic.  Undoubtedly Westeros will be pretty beaten up by the various wars, ten or fifteen years allow it to heal. 

If there's anything left.

[Angel Eyes]

1 hour ago, Pink Fat Rast said:

But PLEASE not with Ned Patrick Harris! As someone who generally highly approves of most things the last seasons as far as delivery (of its questionable material) goes - I think Euron is great as a kind of asshole Daario even if he's nothing like the book version - the casting of young Ned is just so BIZARRE.

Actor's alright and his Ned impression isn't even bad, but just no. And especially not a whole series with him in the lead role.

Who said they were going to do it with Neil Patrick Harris?

[Pink Fat Rast]

lol