Numerous productions across film and television are currently being impacted to varying degrees by the ongoing WGA strike that commenced early last week. With writers picketing outside several studios and sets across the country, many projects are seeing considerable setbacks. Per a report from Deadline, one of those now includes HBO’s next upcoming Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Coming straight from author and executive producer George R.R. Martin himself, production on the show has completely stopped for the duration of the strike, however long it will be.
George Martin took to his official blog to relay the latest on the strike’s impact across the industry, including the production of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and expressed his adamant support of the picketing writers and what to expect in the days and weeks ahead.
“The writers room on GoT spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Night has closed for the duration…No one wanted this — no writer with an ounce of sense, anyway — but the producers and the studios and the networks and the streamers gave us no choice…The Guild negotiated right up to the final deadline on May 1, but it takes two to tango. In the waning hours of May 1, the Writers Guild of America declared a strike. The action began on May 2. There are pickets in front of every studio lot and sound stage in LA, and many in other cities as well. Get used to them. I expect they will be there for a long time.”
“I am not in LA, so I cannot walk a picket line as I did in 1988, but I want to go on the record with my full and complete and unequivocal support of my Guild.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to be the next high fantasy epic from HBO, based on George R.R. Martin’s Hedge Knight novellas, which are encapsulated within the proclaimed Game of Thrones universe. They star two main characters “Dunk and Egg”, or the future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Aegon V Targaryen, who would eventually become king. In the overall timeline established so far by the series adaptations, this latest spin-off takes place not long after the greatest travesties happen in House of the Dragon and several decades before the beginning of Game of Thrones.
How the Strike is Impacting Other GoT Spin-Offs
While the Hedge Knight is facing setbacks, production on the second season of House of the Dragon has since been confirmed to be unimpeded by the strike. All eight episodes have been written and re-written, and the process is continuing as planned. As noted by George Martin also on his blog:
The scripts for the eight s2 episodes were all finished months ago, long before the strike began. Every episode has gone through four or five drafts and numerous rounds of revisions, to address HBO notes, my notes, budget concerns, etc. There will be no further revisions.”
This ensures that the second season, which is set to initiate the catastrophically tragic Dance of the Dragons after the events during the first season’s finale, will be sticking to its 2024 release.
Aside from that, there is no word on how any of this impacts HBO’s preliminary discussions about the planned Aegon the Conqueror spin-off, if it does at all. Given that the network currently has two others on its plate in varying stages of production for the next couple of years, it’s rather likely that future project won’t see any conflict from the strike.
George Martin’s blog can be viewed here.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
