George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series jumps from Hulu to Peacock

George R.R. Martin is hard at work on the sixth book in his Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter. But while he’s doing that, his name is attached to rather a lot of small screen projects, even though he’s not directly involved in most of them. He’s producing an adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s novel Roadmarks for HBO. Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson is adapting Martin’s 1982 short story In the Lost Lands for the big screen, while Gore Verbinski is adapting the 1979 story Sandkings for Netflix.

And there’s more! Martin is also signed on as an executive producer on Wild Cards, an adaptation of the shared universe of superhero novels he and Melinda Snodgrass have been editing since the ’80s. Last we checked in on the project, Hulu was working on two interconnected Wild Cards series, all of it managed by writer Andrew Miller.

Wild Cards is set in a world where an alien pathogen known as the Wild Card virus was released over Manhattan in 1946, giving a lucky few superpowers and turning everyone else into hideous mutants. The stories are written by multiple authors; some stories connect with others, some are direct sequels, and some stand completely on their own. With 27 books published to date, there’s a lot of material to draw from, and with two series right out of the gate, it looks like Miller and co were looking to turn this into another of those lucrative shared universes you’re always hearing about.

Wild Cards will leave Hulu for Peacock, but George R.R. Martin is still executive producer

But not so much. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Wild Cards show(s) has left Hulu for Peacock, the streaming service operated by NBCUniversal. Apparently, Hulu felt the episodes Miller and his team had written were too dark. Also, there were concerns over having to pay licensing fees to Universal Content Productions, which owns the rights to the series. Universal Content Productions, in turn, is owned by NBCUniversal, so Peacock does seem like the less expensive home for the series.

It’s unclear what Peacock will do with the series. Will it still be two series? Just one? It’ll depend on whatever new writer they get, since Andrew Miller is out. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass are still attached as executive producers.

Among Game of Thrones fans (well, okay, among me), there’s kind of a running joke about how Martin seems more willing to talk about the latest Wild Cards book than A Song of Ice and Fire. If this show ends up being a big hit, it’ll be a pretty funny reversal.

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