Westeros

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, George R.R. Martin has renewed his overall deal with HBO, this time for a reported “mid-eight figure” contract that spans five years. An overall deal is one in which any new ideas or pitches a creator generates will belong to the studio. George first signed an overall deal with HBO back in 2013, which was then renewed in 2016. The article proceeds to run through the five projects in various stages of development, as well as House of the Dragon which begins filming next month if all goes to plan. We did like the speculation on the animated project:

We would certainly think a World of Ice and Fire (Affiliate link) animated series would be pretty neat as an anthology show! On a different note, though, James Hibberd—who wrote this piece with Lesley Goldberg—doesn’t touch on the Robert’s Rebellion idea that he was the first to report on. Perhaps it’s fallen by the way side, or perhaps this remains the best avenue for an animated series to take?

In possibly-related news, we revisited the Startling Inc. website we reported on a month ago, and discovered that the mysterious project titled “A Song of Ice and Fire with the Works” has been removed from the “In development” section of the site (as well as two other projects, the Arabian Nights and Montmartre). We remain completely in the dark as to what that project, and who The Works, might be, as well as to whether its removal means it’s no longer in development (which might fit it having been the Robert Rebellion concept, as we speculated then) or whether its acknowledgment of being in development at all was premature.