George R.R. Martin drops details on Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of Seven Kingdoms
George RR Martin can’t stop writing. The pages may not be The winter windsmuch to the dismay of fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, but no one can say the 74-year-old author isn’t doing the job. His latest project: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hague Knighta new spin-off of Game of Thrones to join HBO and Max House of the Dragonwhich is gearing up for a second season. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was previously announced along with plans to reboot HBO Max as “Max”, the new streaming service launching May 23.
Frankly, it sounds like a bit of a headache! But no matter where the media wind blows, Martin is sailing – not only will he produce the series as he did the previous two installments, but he’ll also write all the episodes alongside it. House of the Dragon writer Ira Parker.
Staying true to his web 1.0 lineage, the Max announcement prompted Martin to post an update on his blog on the development of the series, clarifying his intentions and hopes for the series. Fans of the authors’ prose are already familiar with the source material, a series of short novellas we follow the adventures of a knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his squire Egg, who in the history of Westeros becomes none other than King Aegon V Targaryen. “Dunk & Egg” are fan favorite characters and have long been rumored to be featured in the feature film Game of Thrones series, or turned into their own show when the flagship series ended. Now they’re finally getting their moment – but Martin would never allow his readers the pleasure of hearing “Dunk & Egg” in an HBO show name. As he writes in his blog:
The working title will be A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS: THE HEDGE KNIGHT. Whether that will be the final title I can’t say for sure… except that no, it won’t be called TALES OF DUNK & EGG or THE ADVENTURES OF DUNK & EGG or DUNK & EGG or anything like that. I love Dunk and I love Egg, and I know fans call my novellas “the Dunk & Egg stories,” of course, but there are millions of people who don’t know the stories and the title should intrigue them as well. If you don’t know the characters, DUNK & EGG sounds like a sitcom. LAVERNE & SHIRLEY. ABBOTT & COSTELLO. BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD. So no. We want “knight” in the title. Knighthood and chivalry are central to the themes of these stories.
Martin says HBO has given A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms a full season 1 order of six episodes. He envisions the entire series as an anthology of sorts based on the three existing Dunk & Egg novellas: ‘The Hedge Knight’, ‘The Sworn Sword’ and ‘The Mystery Knight’.
“The Dunk & Egg novellas are full-fledged stories that are more like the novels of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE than the imaginary history of FIRE & BLOOD,” Martin notes in his blog. goal is to produce faithful adaptations of those stories for the screen.
The author also says that while the three novellas would span the first three seasons, he envisions the show going far beyond what already exists. The problem: He really wants to write some other Dunk & Egg novellas to inspire Season 4 and beyond.
Before we reach the end of the published stories, I will have to find time to write all the other Dunk & Egg novellas I have planned. There are… gulp… more than I ever imagined. There’s “The Village Hero” and the Winterfell story, that story with the She-Wolves, and maybe I should write that Dornish adventure too to slip in between “The Hedge Knight” and “The Sworn Sword,” and then are there… er… more. All I have to do is finish THE WINDS OF WINTER, then do A DREAM OF SPRING or part two of FIRE & BLOOD, and put a new Dunk & Egg in my bountiful free time between each… and that will helping me get ahead of Ira and his merry crew… for a few more years.
The man works. Let’s not forget.
There’s no timeline for it A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, but Martin says writing the full season is well underway. Meanwhile, production continues House of the Dragon Season 2 kicked off in mid-April for a presumed premiere in 2024. In December, Martin swore he only had 500 pages Winter winds to write, so… who knows when we’ll get that. But hey, maybe you have three Dunk & Egg novellas to read. Doing your work and give the man his space!