Westeros

Hot on the heels of EW‘s exclusive, the Hollywood Reporter has published a two-part extravaganza from Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon chronicler James Hibberd (Part 1, Part 2 digging further into both the origins of House of the Dragon, its story and production, and the future of the show as well as other shows in the Game of Thrones universe.

Prince Daemon trying out his brothers chair.

Our favorite quote in the piece?

There’s a lot of interesting things in Hibberd’s piece, discussing why certain changes are made, but what we found especially interesting is his rundown about why House of the Dragon went forward when other pitches did not, and where the franchise goes after this. It all seems to tie to the reception of season 8 of Game of Thrones and the fact that the Bloodmoon pilot did not work, leading HBO to reassess and decide that GRRM should have a lot more say in the concepts going forward. That seems entirely the right approach, and so far it seems to be paying off given how good House of the Dragon looks.

The other interesting notion is that House of the Dragon is going to run three or perhaps four seasons, telling the story of the Dance… but that there’s an idea floating around of rebooting the show to cover some other parts of the history of the Targaryens, with the Conquest and the Doom of Valyria being mentioned as possibilities by Hibberd. If that happens, what seems clearer is that HBO is thinking very grand, long-term thoughts about this franchise… thoughts that could entail decades of shows and billions of dollars.