Production on the second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon is getting underway as we speak. It’s scheduled to run pretty much through the end of the year, so any chances of seeing new episodes before 2023 is over are basically nil.
But when will we see the second season? HBO and HBO Max content CEO Casey Bloys told Variety that sometime 2024 “is a good guess.” He also guessed that House of the Dragon season 2 wouldn’t be eligible for the 2024 Emmy season, which ends its eligibility period on May 31, 2024. That likely means we’ll see House of the Dragon season 2 sometime in the summer of next year.
And that’s when the first season premiered: on August 21 of 2022. So in the end, it could be a full two years of waiting.
HBO won’t make more Game of Thrones spinoff shows just because
Some studios, like Disney, don’t like to go that long without giving fans more content; witness the number of Marvel and Star Wars shows constantly coming out on Disney+. But although Bloys is open to the idea, he doesn’t want to greenlight another Game of Thrones spinoff just to fill time between new seasons of House of the Dragon.
“My philosophy is a good script is number one priority,” Bloys said. “I am not doing it based on wanting to have one a year, two a year. I want to do it based on the scripts that we’re excited about.”
"Remember to get ‘House of the Dragon’ following up from ‘Game of Thrones,’ we developed a lot of shows, shot a pilot, developed a bunch of scripts and we got ‘House of the Dragon.’ To do that again is going to take the same amount of effort. You have to develop a lot of things, try things. You never know what’s going to work. So we’re currently doing that. I’m not opposed to any number of shows. There’s probably a natural limit to how many fans want, but I’m open to any as long as we feel really good about the scripts and the prospects for a series.It takes a while to get one that hits the mark. I know George [R.R. Martin] feels the same way. You want to do one that everybody’s really proud of and excited about."
I’m on board with all of that. The waits between seasons may feel long, but at least the Game of Thrones universe still feels special and exciting, rather than watered down.
HBO exec doesn’t think a Succession spinoff is likely
In fact, HBO is pretty resistant to spinoffs and prequels in general; House of the Dragon was their first big prequel series of note, even though they’ve had successful shows before. Variety wanted to know if a spinoff of Succession could be in the cards, but Bloys didn’t sound enthusiastic:
"I don’t think so. I always say ‘never say never.’ When we started talking about doing a ‘Thrones’ prequel that was something that HBO had historically never done. I had some people internally saying, ‘This is crazy. What are you doing?’ That said, I think that there’s something about the universe that George created that lent itself to [spin-offs]. There’s a huge history, a lot of different families, a lot of different wars and battles. It doesn’t seem to me that there’s something in ‘Succession’ where you would go, ‘Let’s follow just this kid’ or whatever. It doesn’t seem like a natural thing to me. But if [creator Jesse Armstrong] said I want to do this, then I would follow Jesse’s lead."
As for the next season of Succession, that’s premiering on March 26. We’ll get to see the next step of the fight between billionaire Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his children, as well as potentially hear more stories about Cox not liking how costar Jeremy Strong (Kendall Roy) embraces method acting; aka he’s in character even when the cameras are turned off. “It’s f***ing annoying,” Cox told Town and Country. “Don’t get me going on it.”
HBO isn’t planning continuations or reboots of Watchmen or True Blood
Finally, Bloys reiterated that we probably won’t see more of Watchmen, Damon Lindelof’s superhero show based on Alan Moore’s legendary comic. “‘Watchmen’ was so much his creation,” Bloys says. “If he doesn’t think there’s a story that he wants to put his heart and soul into, it’s hard for me to think that it would be worth doing. It was a very special limited series for us. I would put it in the pantheon of HBO greats. If Damon ever wants to revisit it, he knows that it’s an open door. But it is hard for me to imagine doing one without him.”
We also heard a while back about HBO bringing back True Blood, but Bloys put the kibosh on that, too, saying that they tried a few scripts “but nothing that felt like it got there.”
So HBO is not a fan of spinoffs, reboots and prequels in general, unless it’s really the perfect thing to do. Honestly, I admire the restraint.
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