Okay, this is the barest, tiniest update on a Game of Thrones project currently in development, and I'm almost embarrassed to be writing about it, but here we go: Mattson Tomlin, the man whose been hired to develop a Game of Thrones prequel idea about Aegon the Conqueror, posted a cute little dragon GIF to his Twitter. Behold:
mood pic.twitter.com/S4sgIVrNi3
— mattson tomlin (@mattsontomlin) November 12, 2024
Aegon the Conqueror, the first of many notable men in Westerosi history to be named Aegon Targaryen, was a dragon-rider who lived some 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones (and over 100 years before the events of House of the Dragon). Along with his dragon-riding sisters Rhaenys and Visenya, he took over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and united them under one ruler, which just so happened to be him. He forged the Iron Throne from the swords of his defeated enemies and became the first king of Westeros.
At one point during his war of conquest, Aegon rides his dragon Balerion to the castle of Harrenhal, then the biggest and most resplendent castle in the Seven Kingdoms. But Harren the Black won't yield to Aegon, so the dragon king burns the whole place down, roasting Harren and his sons inside. That turns Harrenhal into the crumbling ruin we remember from Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, and that's probably what Tomlin is referencing with his little GIF.
Tomlin previously talked about his approach to breaking this show, which is based on the beginning sections of George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood. "For me, it's about making sure that I respect George and I respect the text. And then also, it still has to be a dramatic story," Tomlin said. "Those characters have to go on a journey; they have to change; they have to go from a beginning to a middle to an end. Figuring out how to do all of that with the clues that that textbook has left for me and go, okay, I'm going to interpret this very real history and try to make it a really vivid show that hopefully people love and don't hate, doing the best I can."
The Aegon show is one of several potential Game of Thrones spinoffs now bouncing around HBO. However, the network has made clear that only two of these shows are guaranteed to show up on our screens: House of the Dragon, which is already on the air; and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which will premiere its first season sometime in 2025. So the Aegon show may end up on TV one day or HBO may decide not to go forward with it at some point along the path; we'll watch and wait to see exactly what happens.
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