Fantastic news for Game of Thrones fanatics! HBO confirmed the show’s prequel, House of the Dragon, would begin filming in April 2021. During a Q&A of HBO and HBO Max, Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys confirmed the production is ready and looking forward to starting this Spring.

“We’re thrilled with Miguel and Ryan, their collaboration and their collaboration with us, and excited to get going,” said Bloys, according to Deadline. “That’s all moving ahead, and we are excited about that.”

According to Bloys, they had different directions to go with the story; however, House of the Dragon makes more sense now. “We’ve been talking about areas to develop, which is where this prequel came from,” Bloys said. “We are talking about other areas that make sense as well. George R.R. Martin’s world is so big, and what’s interesting about it, not only is it big, but he’s got a lot of road maps in terms of history.”

The executive said House of the Dragon is “an established history that leads you to Game of Thrones the show, and there is a lot of little branches. There is a lot of opportunities and stories to tell.”

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Bloys also said he is not sure about how many series they would release. “In terms of the right number, I’d say the number is the shows that are good,” he said. I’d rather get scripts good and make them stories worth telling than shoot for a certain number of shows. I don’t necessarily have a number in mind, but the goal is always the same, which is, let’s get in business with people we believe in and shows that believe in and worry about the rest later.”

However, spinoffs of GoT are not discarded. “The good news with the prequels is that there is history that George has laid out,” Bloys said. “We are working with George, it would really be something we talk about with him, but for right now, the prequels land themselves to it because of the really expansive history that George laid out in his world.”

Believe it or not, there also was an animated series in the talks. “It was really amusing, what would adult animation be like, would GoT land itself to that, so literally that was a conversation, and there were a couple of conversations with writers, what do you think, what would this be, is there anything to it,” Bloys revealed. “When I say embryonic, I mean really really embryonic.”

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“I’ve never wanted to do this with a mandate that you must have three series by this time, or you must exploit adult animation, or you must do that,” he said. “It’s really coming from, would that be interesting, is that good, do we have a writer we believe in. That’s kind of the approach we are taking. I think you have to because if you don’t do that, it would lead to putting shows on for the sake of it.”