HBO doesn’t want to saturate us with Game of Thrones shows

HBO boss Casey Bloys lays out his strategy when it comes to Game of Thrones series. “The number of shows that I want are the number of shows that are good.”

We’ve been hearing a lot about potential Game of Thrones spin-off series lately. HBO is making a Robert’s Rebellion series. They’re adapting Tales of Dunk & Egg. They’re an animated drama. None of these shows have been officially announced — the only spin-off we know we’re getting for sure is House of the Dragon — but it’s not shocking that HBO might be trying to make more series set in Westeros. After all, Disney is making approximately 11,000 Star Wars and Marvel shows, and HBO (and WarnerMedia, its parent company), needs to keep up, especially if it wants HBO Max to remain competitive in the streaming wars.

But HBO isn’t Disney, and their approach to all of this is a little different. “The way we try to approach it is not by [saying], ‘We need five shows within three years,’ but ‘What are the stories worth telling?'” HBO chief content officer Casey Bloys explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve been developing multiple takes on different worlds. The one I want to do is the one that I think is best creatively. I prefer to make it about the stories and the showrunners and their vision as opposed to hitting some arbitrary target for the right number of shows.”

He said something very similar to Entertainment Weekly:

"As you know, George R.R. Martin has created a very large and detailed universe. What’s great about it is there are roadmaps and histories and characters that lend themselves to adapting for TV…I really try to talk to the team about what are the stories we’re telling, what are the characters worth highlighting? The number of shows that I want are the number of shows that are good. So I try to let that be our guide as opposed to picking a number and working backwards. If the show is good, that’s what we’ll do."

Nevertheless, both outlets tried to pin Bloys down to a more solid number, but he wasn’t having it. “Something between zero and 10!” he told EW. “I mean, obviously, 10 would be too many. We’d be lucky to have more than one. But I want it to be a show that everybody feels really excited by and these shows are hard to get right. So we want to make sure we take our time and do it correctly.”

And he was firm that he doesn’t want to “saturate” the market with Game of Thrones shows the way that Disney is (arguably) saturating Disney+ with Star Wars and Marvel shows. “In terms of over-saturation to me and HBO Max, for any slate, whether it’s at HBO or HBO Max, you try to have some diversity and variance in the slate so it’s not all DC, so it’s not all adult animation, it’s not all acquired programming,” he said. “You find the right level for subscribers that they really respond to and are always finding something new and different to watch. On HBO Max, I don’t want to do all DC shows; I don’t want to do all Game of Thrones spinoffs. But a good mix of those. They’re great properties to have within the mix.”

That all sounds about right to me. He did shoot down the idea that there were Game of Thrones movies in development, though. “That’s not something we’ve talked about,” he said. Could you start?

House of the Dragon begins shooting in April, and will be on our screens in 2022.

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