The Dunk & Egg show is a great idea (and the Harry Potter show an awful one)

As of May 23, HBO Max will no longer exist; instead, the service is being rebranded to just “Max” after it merges with Discovery+. But just in case you were worried this means Max will be flooded exclusively with new unscripted reality shows, the folks at Warner Bros. Discovery also announced a bunch of new scripted series. Nearly all of them are expansions on already existing IP, which is disappointing if you enjoy seeing original stories onscreen.

The two biggest new Max shows announced are a Game of Thrones spinoff based on George R.R. Martin’s Dunk & Egg novellas and a remake of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Thanks to Rowling becoming a poster child for transphobia in recent years, anything connected to Harry Potter generates controversy these days, and the response to the announcement was mixed at best.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’d much rather HBO and Max took big swings on original stories instead of running the same handful of IPs into the ground. While that has become the norm these days with big studios, HBO has always had a reputation for taking chances, which is what allowed them make a show like Game of Thrones in the first place. It’s sobering to think that the chances of them breaking a new series in that vein are less likely now than they were during the early days of Thrones, when the company never did spinoffs.

All that said, I actually think that the Dunk & Egg show — officially titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight — is a really good idea…and on the other end of the spectrum, remaking Harry Potter is an abysmal one.

Why Max’s new Dunk & Egg series is a great idea

Let’s start with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. It’s based on a series of novellas by George R.R. Martin that recount the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his precocious squire Egg, taking place some 100 years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin has written three novellas to date: The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight. All of them were collected in the 2015 omnibus A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is where the show gets its title.

While I suffer from franchise fatigue like everyone else, I think making a show out of Dunk & Egg makes a lot of sense. The Dunk & Egg novellas are beloved by fans and stand on their own as quality stories. The first novella, The Hedge Knight, was published back in 1998. That’s long before the Game of Thrones TV show existed. Martin wasn’t just trying to keep profiting off Westeros; he earnestly wanted to explore a new corner of the world he’d created.

When HBO initially asked Martin to pitch Game of Thrones spinoff ideas, he had two suggestions: the Dance of the Dragons (which became House of the Dragon) and Dunk & Egg. HBO has entertained a lot of other ideas since then, but now it seems they’re coming back around to the stories the author thought had the most potential for television. And he was always right.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms would give GRRM a chance to tell more Dunk & Egg stories

There’s another reason this new spinoff is a particularly great idea. Unlike House of the Dragon, where Martin only serves as an executive producer and consultant, he’ll actually be writing episodes for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This is the first time Martin has written for a Westeros TV show since season 4 of Game of Thrones, after which he stepped back to focus on his novels.

Before publishing A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin spent around a decade working in TV, pitching projects and writing scripts for shows like Beauty and the Beast and The Twilight Zone. He scripted some great episodes of Game of Thrones as well, like the Purple Wedding episode “The Lion and the Rose.” He’s certainly got the skillset for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.

However, the fact that he’s involved in the show has upset some fans who would prefer to spend time working on his long-in-coming novel The Winds of Winter, and I get that. But Dunk & Egg is another series many people have wanted more entries in for a while, and Martin himself has said he hopes to write “seven or eight or ten more” Dunk & Egg novellas. As much as I want more Dunk & Egg, it’s never felt realistic to expect Martin would end up writing that many more stories about the knight and squire duo when he’s still got the final two books of A Song of Ice and Fire and a sequel to Fire & Blood to write.

Having Martin as a writer on the TV show might be the perfect way to explore the continuing tales of Dunk & Egg. He could still get to tell those extra “seven or eight or ten more” stories without actually having to write the novellas, meaning The Winds of Winter could remain his main priority so far as books go.

There are still dangers. The announcement of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is obviously timed to get viewers on board with the Max rebrand. Warner Bros. Discovery is making this show because it’s hoping to turn a profit. But there are still good artistic reasons to produce it, which is more than can be said for the other big announcement…