Game of Thrones prequel series to have monster budgets
By Shawn Lealos
The Game of Thrones prequel series that HBO is planning looks like they will be just as big as the fans have come to expect.
At the moment, there are five different Game of Thrones prequel series in the works, although HBO is not going to make all of them. Writers are developing the five “successor shows” to Game of Thrones, and Variety reported that producer Francesca Orci said that HBO is going “big” on these shows.
The comments came at the INTV conference in Israel during a panel titled The Best of HBO. “It feels like corporate malfeasance to not continue it,” Orsi said. She then went on to say that Game of Thrones will spawn “three, four, five spin-offs.”
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The “successor shows” as HBO calls them will come from projects worked on by Game of Thrones writer Bryan Cogman, Kong: Skull Island writer Max Borenstein, Kingsman: Secret Service co-writer Jane Goldman, L.A. Confidential writer Brian Helgeland, and the Leftovers’ Carly Wray. George R.R. Martin is working with all the writers in one capacity or another.
While the original budget for Game of Thrones was a reasonable $6 million an episode, that has ballooned to about $15 million each episode. Game of Thrones star Iain Glen said that each episode of the final season would be like a movie.
When asked what “going big” meant, Orsi said that “$50 million (per season) would never fly for what we are trying to do.” That will make the series bigger than the first few seasons of Game of Thrones, but there is no word on whether they will approach the money they are spending on these final seasons.
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“If we do take off on one of these Game of Thrones spin-offs, where do we start?” Orsi asked. “We can’t obviously start with the budget of season 8 but would it be a Game of Thrones season 3 budget?”
With the final season of Game of Thrones coming in 2019, the Game of Thrones prequel series won’t start rolling out until 2020 at the earliest.