HBO Developing Jon Snow Spin-off

[Vaith]

3 minutes ago, divica said:

The problem here is that kit's interviews and his previous series gunpowder are very far from inspiring confidence. 

And I don t see how a Jon snow spin off can be anything else than a GOT8.5... If they won t show us the consequences of what happened in Got why make this? 

What I can agree is that other Got important characters won t appear in every episode. 

He grew up with the show, and has learned a lot over the last few years personally, just looking at his experience with rehab. I'll judge him when he does have a track record as a creative. For now I'll have the benefit of the doubt. Obviously I'd ideally want the slate to be wiped clean on the D&D continuity as soon as possible, but there's an argument to be made on Kit's possible take on a show that might wrestle with the legacy of GoT on some level.

And right, I don't know if characters needed could come back. For one, Isaac Hempstead-Wright would be needed at the very least unless they want to kill him off-screen. Isaac has been in I think one movie but seemed to want to pursue science over acting after growing up in the industry. I do think Hivju would return though (the living character geographically closest to Jon) as he clearly had fun playing Tormund.

[divica]

2 minutes ago, Vaith said:

He grew up with the show, and has learned a lot over the last few years personally, just looking at his experience with rehab. I'll judge him when he does have a track record as a creative. For now I'll have the benefit of the doubt. Obviously I'd ideally want the slate to be wiped clean on the D&D continuity as soon as possible, but there's an argument to be made on Kit's possible take on a show that might wrestle with the legacy of GoT on some level.

And right, I don't know if characters needed could come back. For one, Isaac Hempstead-Wright would be needed at the very least unless they want to kill him off-screen. Isaac has been in I think one movie but seemed to want to pursue science over acting after growing up in the industry. I do think Hivju would return though (the living character geographically closest to Jon) as he clearly had fun playing Tormund.

Kit was very involved in the creation of gunpowder. I think it was his personal project. And the kindest thing to say about it was that it was boring. 

If you think about it there aren t a lot of needed returning characters. Sansa, bran, Sam, tyrion would need to appear in some episodes, then it would be nice to have some unimportant characters from got to appear in 1 or 2 eps for continuity and finally at the very least a special appearance from Danny in order to change the last impression we had from jon/Danny. 

And if some of these characters don t want to return then they can have died. Hell, if the spin off was about the succession after branʼs death it could work... 

[Ran]

The reviews for Gunpowder are not stellar but they are modestly positive. 7.25 average rating according to RT, 63 out of 100 at Metacritic. Obviously, individual matters of taste and all, but I think people should be wary of assuming their take on the show as the general consensus.

[divica]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

The reviews for Gunpowder are not stellar but they are modestly positive. 7.25 average rating according to RT, 63 out of 100 at Metacritic. Obviously, individual matters of taste and all, but I think people should be wary of assuming their take on the show as the general consensus.

You consider those numbers a success? 

6.5 on imdb for a series is bad. 63 on Metacritic the same. I don t have enough experience with rt to say if 7.25 is good or not. 

For comparison, those numbers are similar to the outpost. A cw sci-fi show... 

[Mystical]

32 minutes ago, divica said:

And I don t see how a Jon snow spin off can be anything else than a GOT8.5... If they won t show us the consequences of what happened in Got why make this?

I can already see the first episode. Jon and the Wildlings pitch some tents after they have marched for a few hours (picking up where GoT left off). They talk about nothing while watching the snow melt a little. They can't go on a hunt because everything beyond the wall is dead, thanks to the undead. So they decide to try their luck ice fishing. The most suspenseful thing that will happen is the ice cracking and someone being in danger of falling into sub-zero freezing water and dying (though it didn't kill Jon so he should let them borrow his plot armor I think). And then they find out that there are no fish. Oh no, all that drama and suspense for nothing.

The rest of 'Season 1' will be a race against the clock for them all to reach a coastline so they don't all die of starvation. Since they can't plant anything and there are no animals, they will have to get in touch with nature and see what they scrunch up between where they are and the coast.

Thrilling stuff.

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, divica said:

You consider those numbers a success? 

6.5 on imdb for a series is bad. 63 on Metacritic the same. I don t have enough experience with rt to say if 7.25 is good or not. 

For comparison, those numbers are similar to the outpost. A cw sci-fi show... 

They're more positive than negative. A number of the top critics on RT rated it at 4 of 5, for example. Metacritic draws from fewer sources and has editors making subjective decisions on scoring as well, but because of the smaller number of sources you can get larger variances. To me a 63 on Metacritic could also be an 83, it all depends on who they reviewed for their results.

IMDB's ratings are useless and I don't pay attention to them, but on IMDB Gunpowder has a 7.3 average, in line with the critic consensus from RT.

[divica]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

They're more positive than negative. A number of the top critics on RT rated it at 4 of 5, for example. Metacritic draws from fewer sources and has editors making subjective decisions on scoring as well, but because of the smaller number of sources you can get larger variances. To me a 63 on Metacritic could also be an 83, it all depends on who they reviewed for their results.

IMDB's ratings are useless and I don't pay attention to them, but on IMDB Gunpowder has a 7.3 average, in line with the critic consensus from RT.

You are confusing the titles. Kit's Gunpowder has 6.5 on imdb which is bad for a series. 

For the standards of imdb and Metacritic those scores are bad. You don't really get scores much lower than that unless the production is very low budget or the story is very bad. 

And your opinion about imdb is what I think about rt. To me it is useless and unreliable. 

And another parameter you can use to evaluate the series is the low number of people that bordered to rate it. 

[divica]

15 minutes ago, Mystical said:

I can already see the first episode. Jon and the Wildlings pitch some tents after they have marched for a few hours (picking up where GoT left off). They talk about nothing while watching the snow melt a little. They can't go on a hunt because everything beyond the wall is dead, thanks to the undead. So they decide to try their luck ice fishing. The most suspenseful thing that will happen is the ice cracking and someone being in danger of falling into sub-zero freezing water and dying (though it didn't kill Jon so he should let them borrow his plot armor I think). And then they find out that there are no fish. Oh no, all that drama and suspense for nothing.

The rest of 'Season 1' will be a race against the clock for them all to reach a coastline so they don't all die of starvation. Since they can't plant anything and there are no animals, they will have to get in touch with nature and see what they scrunch up between where they are and the coast.

Thrilling stuff.

LOL that is similar to the plot of Gunpowder... 

I confess, in my head this is a one season project where we have an update of what happened in westeros and have a somewhat different ending. 

If the objective is to have Jon and the wildlings go on adventures and find the beauty of the true north I will be shocked

[Ran]

Just now, divica said:

You are confusing the titles. Kit's Gunpowder has 6.5 on imdb which is bad for a series. 

The individual episodes are rated 7.4, 7.2, and 7.3, which is what I averaged. As I understand it they do some kind of weighting for series ratings which they aren't too clear about.

 

Just now, divica said:

And another parameter you can use to evaluate the series is the low number of people that bordered to rate it. 

It was a one-off, 3 episode BBC miniseries. There's many such series, however good, with fewer ratings. There's many a great show that no one ever saw, and many a bad show that went on for a dozen seasons and were watched the world over. 

I'm not saying Gunpowder is great. But all those ratings are modestly positive. Irredeemably bad shows go under 50%. 

[divica]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

The individual episodes are rated 7.4, 7.2, and 7.3, which is what I averaged. As I understand it they do some kind of weighting for series ratings which they aren't too clear about.

 

It was a one-off, 3 episode BBC miniseries. There's many such series, however good, with fewer ratings. There's many a great show that no one ever saw, and many a bad show that went on for a dozen seasons and were watched the world over. 

I'm not saying Gunpowder is great. But all those ratings are modestly positive. Irredeemably bad shows go under 50%. 

Imdb has an individual rating for each episode and a completely different rating for the series as a whole. 

And I meant the show was bad, as in it isn t interesting. I didn t mean it bad as in it is unwatchable garbage. 

Maybe I am being to strict, but a good show needs to have more than slightly good reviews. And by the way, a show that landed kit and Liv Tyler at the time attracted a lot of buzz. 

[Back in Black-Snow]

Gunpowder wasn't great, but I enjoyed watching it.

[C.T. Phipps]

I admit, when I heard this series announced, I assumed it would be entirely set North of the Wall with none of Westeros' other nations involved.

George keeps pitching stories set away from the Seven Kingdoms.

[C.T. Phipps]

Rawrist has a great video speculating on Snow content.

 

[BreathOfFire]

I would really like to see Daenerys make a cameo in this new spin-off. At least as a figment of Jon's subconscious or in his dreams. That would be plausible.  Emilia Clarke currently has no plans of reprising her role and that to many of us fans is a disappointment. I do however believe she would change her mind and HBO would push towards having her back if enough fans pressed to issue. So many of you probably heard about the "Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers" petition....well that gained notoriety fast. So many G.O.T. fans signed. It was even on CNN. HBO was down right embarrassed. I believe it largely played a role in this new Jon Snow Spin-off.. It's their redeemer.

Anyhow folks, I started a petition to HBO to have Emilia Clarke appear in a future Game of Thrones Spin-Off. With enough signatures and shares it will gain notoriety as well. Here is the link to the petition. Please share! https://www.change.org/BreathOfFire

[C.T. Phipps]

Call Michelle Fairley stat.

Seriously, I have a dream for Snow and that dream is one of the strangest you would ever imagine. I would love for Snow to be about a huge chunk of the lost storylines of A Song and Ice and Fire that poor Kit Harrington's Jon has to deal with. They're anachronistic, out of order, and weird but they're still Martin's storylines adapted to the screen and will benefit the show tremendously and the book arc I want to see adapted the most?

Lady Stoneheart.

Someone is killing Freys (cousins, nephews, and so on who had little to do with the Red Wedding) in the Riverlands and Jon is sent a message by Brienne of Tarth to go investigate (lured there for for nefarious purposes!). Jon finds out his not-mother has been resurrected from the dead. Lots of emotional power there and he has to put Zombie Cat back in the ground but confront his complicated bordering on hate and love in equal measure feelings regarding her.

Is it lower stakes than the conquest of the Seven Kingdoms? Absolutely. Is it the kind of TV everyone would love?

Yes.

[PirateVergo]

The only positive in this spin-off is that Jon was the most disrespected character by HBO out of the major POVs

-Removed any layer of depth to his character and turned him into Ned 2.0

-Utterly failed against the Bolton had to be saved by Sansa (Sansa who isn't even involved in the Bolton storyline in the books yikes)

-Utterly failed north of the wall had to be saved by Dany

-Utterly failed to do anything during the battle of Winterfell, outshone by everybody and their mothers, Arya stole the only storyline Jon had build up to

-"Muh queen" nonsense 

-King in the North but does nothing with it and immediatly bends the knee 

And then D&D had the nerve to say that Jon always saves the day, I can't recall a SINGLE TIME where Jon actually saved the day, he got bailed out by Stannis when the wildings attacked and utterly failed at Hardhome

I hope that this show will finally give us a Jon Sword that is worthy of the one in the books although I'm not too hopeful, I can't see how a show that's focused on a single character can hope to live up to the expectations set by GOT

 

 

 

[Maia]

I wrote this for another thread, but it fits here even better:

Jon will get his high-fantasy/horror? arc against the Others that was excised from GoT, and the outcome of that last is going to be treated as merely a respite, a False Spring. What else of interest is there still for him to do? Overthrow Sansa?.

In hindsight, it seems that GRRM's subversion intent has always been limited to a Fisher King archetype becoming the "high king" rather than an  Arthurian archetype, who would be the the prophesised savior, but remain largely unknown and unaknowledged. The idea that a woman might play either of these roles was clearly a step too far for him and only used as a diversion. 

In fact, the initial outline* spells rather clearly IMHO that Tyrion, Jon and Bran - i.e. "dwarfs, bastards and broken things"  were supposed to be the overall main characters, with everybody else being merely a source of conflict or motivation for these 3. So, "Snow" could just go back to the roots, as it were, and somewhat redeem all the various set-ups of the Others, the Long Night, the prophecies, etc. Since the main political part is done, and Dinklage is unlikely to want to come back, they could even dispense with Tyrion at this point. There could be some limited politicking between various northern and wildling factions instead, if called for.

*Which clearly demonstrates, along with WoIAF an FaB that GRRM's "gardening", despite all the annoyance and delays that it caused, tends to greatly improve on his original ideas.

P.S. Re-doing season 8 is clearly a pipe dream, but salvaging the Long Night/ menace of the Others/prophecies  is doable and even indicated, if they want Westeros to be a franchise. Build in a time skip, so that physical changes of the  actors don't feel jarring.

P.S.S. I hope that they wouldn't try to put back in side-plots that clearly have been already overtaken by the show narrative and aren't relevant  any more - i.e. UnCat, Arianne, etc. Unless they can be somehow re-tooled to tie into new and different arcs.

[C.T. Phipps]

For me, there's one way for SNOW to become as big a hit as Game of Thrones was and House of the Dragon is shaping up to be: Martin, Martin, Martin.

There's a massive amount of cut A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE material that could and should be harvested for this show. It would be anachronistic and require a lot of retcons to fit into a new timeline and Post-Game of Thrones world but it'll still be superior to anything that random TV writers would be able to come up with.

Just off the top of my head:

* Mace Rayder survived with magic
* Lady Stoneheart ("There's more Freys to kill!")
* Val
* Alys Karkstark (Sansa is doing a shit job reigning in her lords)
* Craster's children
* Young Griff (Yes, straight up have Westeros invaded by a Targaryen pretender and force Jon Snow to man up that he is the REAL Aegon Targaryen)
* Victarion Greyjoy ("I was at sea!")
* Arianne Martell (another branch of the Martells have assumed power)

As a jumbled up incoherent mess of harvested plotlines, it would STILL be better than 99% of all television out there.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

7 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

There's a massive amount of cut A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE material that could and should be harvested for this show.

That would be difficult considering that the main series isn't even finished.

[C.T. Phipps]

24 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

That would be difficult considering that the main series isn't even finished.

And yet there are so many plots that were discarded anyway.