George R.R. Martin explains his new Game of Thrones show Hedge Knight

George R.R. Martin can’t cease writing. The pages won’t be The Winds of Winter, a lot to A Song of Ice and Fire followers’ dismay, however nobody can say the 74-year-old writer doesn’t Do the Work. His newest venture: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, a new spinoff of Game of Thrones to affix HBO and Max’s House of the Dragon, which is gearing up for a second season. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was beforehand introduced together with plans to reboot HBO Max as “Max,” the rebranded streaming service set to launch on May 23.

Honestly it seems like a bit of a headache! But wherever the media winds blow, Martin sails — not solely will he produce the sequence like he has the earlier two installments, however he’ll additionally pen all of the episodes alongside House of the Dragon author Ira Parker.

True to his net 1.0 lineage, the Max announcement prompted Martin to submit an replace on his weblog in regards to the improvement of the sequence, by which he clarified his intentions and hopes for the sequence. Fans of the authors’ prose are already accustomed to the supply materials, a sequence of brief novellas following the adventures of a knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his squire Egg, who within the historical past of Westeros goes on to develop into none aside from King Aegon V Targaryen. “Dunk & Egg” are fan-favorite characters and had been lengthy been rumored to both be included into the principle Game of Thrones sequence, or spun off into their very own show when the flagship sequence wrapped up. Now they’re lastly getting their second — however Martin was by no means going to offer his readers the pleasure of listening to “Dunk & Egg” in an HBO show identify. As he writes in his weblog:

The working title can be A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS: THE HEDGE KNIGHT. Whether that would be the remaining title, I can’t say for positive… past saying that no, it gained’t be referred to as TALES OF DUNK & EGG or THE ADVENTURES OF DUNK & EGG or DUNK & EGG or something alongside these strains. I really like Dunk and I really like Egg, and I do know that followers discuss with my novellas as “the Dunk & Egg stories,” positive, however there are thousands and thousands of folks on the market who have no idea the tales and the title must intrigue them too. If you don’t know the characters, DUNK & EGG seems like a sitcom. LAVERNE & SHIRLEY. ABBOTT & COSTELLO. BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD. So, no. We need “knight” within the title. Knighthood and chivalry are central to the themes of these tales.

Martin says HBO has given A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms a full season 1 order of six episodes. He envisions the total sequence as a sort of anthology based mostly on the three present Dunk & Egg novellas: “The Hedge Knight,” “The Sworn Sword,” and “The Mystery Knight.”

“The Dunk & Egg novellas are fully-fleshed narratives more like the novels of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE than the imaginary history of FIRE & BLOOD,” Martin notes in his weblog, “The tales are proper there on the web page, and our purpose is to provide devoted variations of these tales for the display.

The writer additionally says that whereas the three novellas would comprise the primary three seasons, he envisions the show going properly past what already exists. The situation: He actually desires to jot down a bunch of different Dunk & Egg novellas to encourage season 4 and past.

Before we attain the top of the revealed tales, I might want to discover time to jot down all the opposite Dunk & Egg novellas that I’ve deliberate. There are… gulp… extra of them than I had as soon as thought. There’s “The Village Hero” and the Winterfell story, the one with the She-Wolves, and perhaps I would like to jot down that Dornish journey too to slide in between “The Hedge Knight” and “The Sworn Sword,” and after that there are… ah… extra. I simply want to complete THE WINDS OF WINTER, after which do both A DREAM OF SPRING or quantity two of FIRE & BLOOD, and slip in a new Dunk & Egg between every of these in my copious spare time… and that can maintain me forward of Ira and his merry crew… for just a few extra years.

The man works. Let’s not overlook it.

There is not any timeline for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, however Martin says writing on the total season is properly underway. Meanwhile, manufacturing on House of the Dragon season 2 started in mid-April for a suspected 2024 premiere. In December, Martin swore he solely had 500 pages of Winds of Winter to jot down, so… who is aware of once we’ll get that. But hey, perhaps you’ve got three Dunk & Egg novellas to learn. Do your work and provides the person his house!