The Status of Every Game of Thrones Spinoff in Development
HBO Chairman and CEO Casey Bloys didn’t exactly light up the room with excitement during his press tour at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards. When asked about the next Game of Thrones spinoff, his answer was blunt: outside of House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, there’s “no movement” on anything else right now.
Cue the collective sigh from fans hoping for news on Nine Voyages, Ten Thousand Ships, or any of the half-dozen other projects that have been rumored, teased, and occasionally shelved over the past several years. But before anyone starts drafting eulogies for the Game of Thrones franchise, it’s worth putting Bloys’ comments into context. He was at the Emmys to promote A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which had just been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. Naturally, that’s where his attention was.
This is a good moment to take a full inventory of the status of every Game of Thrones spinoff in development, from the shows already airing to the ones still stuck in the writers’ room, and even the ones that never made it out alive. Some of these projects are closer than you’d think. Others have been quietly gathering dust for years. Let’s separate the momentum from the mirages.
HBO’s Current Strategy: House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
HBO’s priorities right now are crystal clear, and frankly, they make sense. Two shows are carrying the entire weight of the Thrones universe, and both have earned it.
House of the Dragon premiered in 2022 and just wrapped its third season. The prequel dramatizes the Dance of the Dragons, the brutal Targaryen civil war between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother Aegon II. Before that war, House Targaryen commanded more than a dozen dragons and sat comfortably atop Westeros. After it, the dragons were nearly wiped out and the family’s grip on power went with them. The source material comes from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, and the show has one more season to go. Pre-production starts in October 2026, filming begins in Spring 2027, and audiences should expect the final season sometime in 2028.
Then there’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which fills the gap between House of the Dragon and the original series. By this point in the timeline, the dragons are gone, but House Targaryen still holds the Iron Throne. The show follows Ser Duncan the Tall, a hedge knight chasing glory at a tourney in Ashford Meadow, and his young companion Egg, whose true identity is far bigger than his stature suggests. It’s based on Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, and its charm has clearly worked. The first season premiered in January 2026, and season 2 has already wrapped filming.
So, when’s the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 2 release date? Bloys confirmed it’s targeted for the “first half of ’27,” which lines up with earlier reporting. A third season is expected to follow in 2028, at which point showrunner Ira Parker will need to figure out how to keep the story going once Martin’s published material runs out. He reportedly already has a plan for that transition, which is reassuring given how badly things went the last time a Thrones show ran out of book to adapt.
Upcoming Spinoffs and Movies in the Pipeline
Beyond the two shows currently in production, HBO and Warner Bros. have several other projects sitting at various stages of development. None of them have firm release dates, but each tells us something about how the studio is trying to expand the world beyond Westeros’ usual borders.
Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest Movie Update
Here’s a twist: the studio’s next major Thrones project isn’t a TV show at all. Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest is being developed as a feature film through Warner Bros., the movie division of HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. HBO reportedly explored a television version of the same story before deciding a film made more sense.
The plot covers Aegon I Targaryen’s campaign, alongside his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, to unite the Seven Kingdoms under a single throne for the first time.
Like House of the Dragon, this material is drawn from Fire & Blood, and it includes plenty of big-screen-worthy moments: Balerion the Black Dread torching Harrenhal, the Field of Fire, and the founding of King’s Landing itself.
This latest Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest movie update confirms the project won’t arrive before 2028. No director or cast has been announced yet, but Warner Bros. has confirmed the film is greenlit and moving forward, built on a script from House of Cards creator Beau Willimon. Given the scale of the source material, this has the makings of the most cinematic Thrones story told yet, assuming the studio doesn’t get cold feet.
Nine Voyages and The Golden Empire Animated Series
Two of the more ambitious ideas HBO has floated involve stepping outside Westeros entirely, and both have landed on animation as the format of choice.
Nine Voyages, sometimes referred to as The Sea Snake, would follow a young Corlys Velaryon on the journeys that made him the wealthiest sailor in Westerosi history, including stops in the Free Cities, the Port of Ibben, and Asshai-by-the-Shadow. First reported back in 2021 as a live-action concept, the project shifted to animation once HBO realized the constant globe-hopping would make live-action production prohibitively expensive. As of January 2026, it remains in development with animator Genndy Tartakovsky attached, which is a promising sign given his track record with stylized, kinetic action.
The Golden Empire takes things even further afield, into Yi Ti, a region loosely inspired by Imperial China that barely exists on the page. Martin has written almost nothing about it outside of four pages in The World of Ice and Fire, which gives the show’s creative team an unusual amount of freedom. What little lore exists is compelling: Yi Ti is ruled by a god-emperor, propped up by hundreds of lesser princes, and its history includes the Bloodstone Emperor, who murdered his own sister to seize power. Currently, the empire is fractured among three rival god-emperors, a setup practically begging for a prestige drama. Unfortunately, updates have been scarce since 2022, when Martin mentioned a “great young writer” attached and praised the planned art and animation style.
Ten Thousand Ships and The Mad King Stage Play
Ten Thousand Ships has arguably had the longest, most frustrating road of any project on this list. It would dramatize Princess Nymeria’s journey, leading her people from the river Rhoyne in Essos across the Narrow Sea to eventual settlement in Dorne, a migration that reshaped House Martell’s future. The story would also take viewers to Sothoryos, a continent never shown on screen before. Despite multiple writers cycling through the project over the years, the most recent update came in 2024, when Martin confirmed that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ebony Booth was drafting a pilot script. Since then, silence.
Game of Thrones: The Mad King, meanwhile, is the outlier on this list, a stage play rather than a screen adaptation. It debuted this year through the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, dramatizing the tourney at Harrenhal where Rhaegar Targaryen attempted to unseat his father, the infamous Mad King Aerys II. The play also covers Rhaegar’s forbidden romance with Lyanna Stark, offering the most detailed look yet at the events of Robert’s Rebellion. Its initial run has ended, but a second production is scheduled for London in 2027.
Shelved Projects: What Happened to the Jon Snow Sequel (Snow)?
Not every idea survives contact with HBO’s development process, and the most high-profile casualty is Snow, the long-rumored sequel that would have brought Kit Harington back as Jon Snow.
The concept was reportedly darker and more introspective than fans expected: a character study of a man unraveling from PTSD, discarding his Valyrian steel sword Longclaw, chasing away his direwolf Ghost, and building cabins only to burn them down again. It’s an intriguing premise on paper, but according to reporting earlier this year, HBO ultimately decided it was too bleak to greenlight, particularly given the pressure of following up one of television’s most-watched finales. Harington himself has confirmed the project is shelved.
That’s not necessarily the end of the story, though. The same reporting suggested a reworked concept is in early exploratory development, one that could pair Jon Snow with Arya Stark and open the door to scenes set in Essos. It’s a promising idea, though logistically murky given Jon’s storyline is rooted north of the Wall. Given how early-stage this reworking reportedly is, it shouldn’t be counted as a real project just yet.
Beyond Snow, Martin has dropped a few tantalizing hints about what else might be coming. At a 2025 appearance at the Iceland Noir convention, he mentioned that HBO had “five or six series” in some form of development, explicitly noting there are “some sequels” among them. Separately, at a 2024 talk at the Oxford Writers’ House, he confirmed four animated spinoffs are in development, only two of which (Nine Voyages and The Golden Empire) have been publicly detailed. That leaves at least two mystery animated projects and multiple live-action sequels still unaccounted for.
What This Means for the Future of the Franchise
Taken together, the status of every Game of Thrones spinoff in development paints a picture of a franchise that’s far from finished, even if the pace feels glacial to fans craving more immediate news. HBO has clearly learned to be more selective since the days of quietly shelving Blood Moon and the live-action Flea Bottom series, both of which died well before reaching audiences.
For now, the most reliable news on the horizon is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 2, expected in the first half of 2027, followed by House of the Dragon’s final season in 2028 and Aegon’s Conquest sometime after that. Everything else, from Nymeria’s fleet to the mysteries of Yi Ti, remains a waiting game. Given Martin’s track record of teasing far more than he delivers, patience isn’t optional here. It’s mandatory.
