HBO spent $30 million on a Game of Thrones spin-off that was scrapped

watch game of thrones online stream
(Image credit: HBO)

Game of Thrones was the biggest show on television, so it's no wo༺nder HBO spent big on trying to deliver a spin-off. Unfortunately, the first attempt at a new show set in the worl🌃d of Westeros was not a success – and ended up costing the network $30 million as a result.

Jane Goldman, best known for penning the ♛first Kingsman movie and X-Men: First Class, wrote a pilot episode for HBO, with S🌺.J. Clarkson (Succession, Jessica Jones, The Defenders, Dexter) as director. Naomi Watts was cast in a leading role, with the show set to take place thousands of years before the main Game of Thrones saga, showing the origins of the White Walkers and much more. 

). 

"And when I saw a cut of it in a few months after I arrived, I said to [HBO boss Casey Bloys], 'This just doesn't work and I 💃don't think it delivers on the promise of the original series.' And he didn't disagree, which actually was a relief."

"So we unfortunately decided to pull the plug on it," Greenblatt con♉tinu🦩ed. "There was enormous pressure to get it right and I don’t think that would have worked."

The result was the Game of Thrones prequel being scrapped – and another rising from its ashes. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:House of the Dragon is now en route to HBO Max, with the new series🎀 telling a story set only a few hundred years before the main Game of Thrones s⛄tory, rather than thousands of years. Matt Smith leads the cast and director Miguel Sapochnik acts as showrunner.

Speaking to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:GamesRadar+ earlier this year, Sapochnik compared filming House of the Dragon to his latest feature film, Finch, which stars Tom Hanks as a man living in a 🔥post-apocalyptic world who builds a robot named Jeff to take care of his dog.

"[They're] very, very, very dif💯ferent. Finch is two actors and a dog. House of the Dragon is lots of dragons and lots of actors. [Laugꦯhs] They're very different experiences," Sapochnik said. 

"But the practice is the same if you're a director, which is I always ask myself in any project that I'm involved in, whose story is it? Whose point of view is it? What am I trying to say, and is that getting in the way of tellin📖g the story? So I approach things from the same perspective. I think that making Finch was a welcome respite from making Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. But it doesn't mean that I wasn't on set now and then, with an RV and a dog and a couple of ☂actors, and I didn't wish that I had a dragon there too."

Read the full interview 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:with Sapochnik here. House of the Dragon will rele🗹ase on HBO Max next 🦄year.

Jack Shepherd
Freelance Journalist

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work aꦑt The Independent as⛦ a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.