HBO sends another Game Of Thrones spin-off into production

The Many-Faced God smiles his many-mouthed smiles upon Westeros once again. Hot on the heels of the season premiere of House Of The Dragon, HBO has sent another long-prophesized Game Of Thrones spin-off into production. Based on a series of prequel novellas, often referred to colloquially as “Tales Of Dunk And Egg,” A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms follows two of author George R.R. Martin’s most popular creations: Ser Duncan the Tall (played by Peter Claffey), a.k.a. “Dunk,” and his young squire “Egg” (Dexter Sol Ansell), whose true identity might constitute as a spoiler, even though his identity has been widely available since 1998.

Three of its six episodes will be directed by Lessons In Chemistry director Sarah Adina Smith, and executive producer Owen Harris will helm the other three. HBO has also cast several more roles, including Finn Bennett as Aerion Targaryen, Bertie Carvel as Baelor Targaryen, Tanzyn Crawford as Tanselle, Daniel Ings as Ser Lyonel Baratheon, and Sam Spruell as Maekar Targaryen.

In development since 2021, the series takes place in between House Of The Dragon and Game Of Thrones, but will hopefully do less to remind us of how disappointing the White Walkers arc was. Things are still blond as hell in the Seven Kingdoms, with the Targaryens seated on the Iron Throne and “the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory.”

Martin has been talking about expanding the characters’ roles in the series for more than a decade, dropping teases of the continued adventures of Dunk and Egg since 2014. He wrote on his LiveJournal:

My original intent was to publish all the Dunk & Egg stories in a series of anthologies and then collect them all together in one big book. But by the time of “The Mystery Knight,” it became plain that the stories were just too long, and there were going to be too many of them. So instead of one big book, the plan now is for a series of Dunk & Egg collections, each comprised of three novellas. The first one to consist of the three published stories, “The Hedge Knight,” “The Sworn Sword,” and “The Mystery Knight.” The obvious title would have been THE HEDGE KNIGHT, but there is already a certain amount of confusion between “The Hedge Knight” the novella and THE HEDGE KNIGHT the graphic novel, and we did not want to compound the difficulty, so the first Dunk & Egg collection was titled A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS instead.

In the same post, he discussed the possibility of a Dunk and Egg series, which had a “complicated” rights issue. He wrote that if another studio or network purchased the rights to the characters, “We would need to remove all the references to House Targaryen, the Iron Throne, etc… not completely impossible, but certainly undesirable. Whereas if HBO decided they wanted to make a Dunk & Egg miniseries or TV movies, they’d first need to buy the stories. That’s a much more attractive proposition for all concerned, I think… but if it happens, it will happen years from now, not tomorrow, and not next week.” 10 years and several shelved Game Of Thrones spin-offs later, Dunk and Egg are ready for their HBO debut.