It’s a joyous time in the Seven Kingdoms. This week, Warner Bros. Discovery broke the news that they’re moving forward with another Game of Thrones prequel, titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, for their newly rebranded Max streaming service. It’s based on the popular Dunk & Egg novellas by George R.R. Martin, which detail the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his precocious squire Egg, set roughly 100 years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is exciting. Of all the Game of Thrones spinoff ideas HBO was mulling, adapting Dunk & Egg made the most sense. In fact, a Dunk and Egg show was the first spinoff idea Martin pitched HBO, along with a story about the Dance of the Dragons, which went on to become House of the Dragon.
Now that the news is out, Martin has taken to his Not a Blog to discuss A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight title could change, but don’t expect “Dunk & Egg” to be in it
To start, Martin weighed in on the title of the show, saying that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is the working title of the series, and implying that it’s not set in stone.
However, the chances that it’ll change to include “Dunk & Egg” in there anywhere are pretty much zero. “t won’t be called TALES OF DUNK & EGG or THE ADVENTURES OF DUNK & EGG or DUNK & EGG or anything along those lines,” Martin wrote. “I love Dunk and I love Egg, and I know that fans refer to my novellas as ‘the Dunk & Egg stories,’ sure, but there are millions of people out there who do not know the stories and the title needs to intrigue them too. If you don’t know the characters, DUNK & EGG sounds like a sitcom. LAVERNE & SHIRLEY. ABBOTT & COSTELLO. BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD. So, no. We want ‘knight’ in the title. Knighthood and chivalry are central to the themes of these stories.”
I think this is a really smart choice. I can actually recall a time long ago when friends told me about Dunk & Egg and I thought it that sounded kind of like a goofy sitcom name and not something that immediately made me think of a Song of Ice and Fire-type fantasy adventure. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a fantastic title; the big question is whether The Hedge Knight subtitle will stick. But as Martin clarifies, there’s a reason for that, too.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 1 will adapt only The Hedge Knight
Martin explained that “HBO has given us a greenlight to film for a full season (not just a pilot), most likely of six episodes… though that is not set in stone, and won’t be until considerably later in the process.” So we’re definitely getting an entire season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, though the episode count could shift.
It’s here that things get interesting. As of this writing, Martin has published three Dunk & Egg novellas: The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight. Season 1 will be sticking to the first one.
"Our premiere season will be an adaptation of the first of the three published novellas, “The Hedge Knight,” the tale of how Dunk & Egg first met during a tournament at Ashford Meadow. The pilot script is already written, and I think it’s terrific. It was written by Ira Parker, who is no stranger to Westeros. He was part of Ryan Condal’s writing staff for the first season of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, and wrote the fourth episode of Hot D’s first season, “King of the Narrow Sea.” That’s the one where Prince Daemon returns to King’s Landing after conquering the Stepstones, and takes Princess Rhaenyra down into the stews of Flea Bottom. Ryan Condal is on board as well, as an Executive Producer. So am I.There is no date set yet for the series premiere, or even for the show to begin shooting… but the writing is well underway. Ira has assembled a small but very talented team, and they are at it already, building on the foundations laid down last year in previous creative summits… and of course on the original novella. The Dunk & Egg novellas are fully-fleshed narratives more like the novels of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE than the imaginary history of FIRE & BLOOD; the stories are right there on the page, and our goal is to produce faithful adaptations of those tales for the screen."
One thing I find curious about this is that Martin doesn’t mention his own writing responsibilities for the series. The official press release from Warner Bros. Discovery says that he will be an executive producer as well as a writer, but Martin mostly focuses on Ira Parker and the writer’s room being assembled for the show. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more updates from Martin about how active he plans to be on the series.
Will George R.R. Martin write more Dunk & Egg novellas?
Should A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight prove successful, the plan is for future seasons to adapt the next novellas. Since Martin has written three Dunk & Egg stories total, that means there’s plenty of runway for three seasons as of right now.
But what happens after that? Martin has previously said he had hopes to write “seven or eight or ten more” Dunk & Egg stories. Given that the author is still hard at work on The Winds of Winter, does this mean there’s a chance that Dunk & Egg could end up in a similar situation to Game of Thrones, with the show passing the novellas? The short answer is yes. For the long answer, here’s Martin:
"If THE HEDGE KNIGHT turns out as well as we hope it will, our hope would be to go on and adapt THE SWORN SWORD and THE MYSTERY KNIGHT as well. That will take a few years. Then comes the hard part. Before we reach the end of the published stories, I will need to find time to write all the other Dunk & Egg novellas that I have planned. There are… gulp… more of them than I had once thought. There’s “The Village Hero” and the Winterfell story, the one with the She-Wolves, and maybe I need to write that Dornish adventure too to slip in between “The Hedge Knight” and “The Sworn Sword,” and after that there are… ah… more. I just need to finish THE WINDS OF WINTER, and then do either A DREAM OF SPRING or volume two of FIRE & BLOOD, and slip in a new Dunk & Egg between each of those in my copious spare time… and that will keep me ahead of Ira and his merry crew… for a few more years.Well, I will worry about that tomorrow. Today, we’re celebrating. Dunk & Egg are coming."
Concerns for another day; as Martin said, today is for rejoicing. We’re actually going to see Dunk & Egg on the small screen. For now, that’s enough. We can worry about season 4 when we get there.
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