Aegon's Conquest writer talks working with George R.R. Martin on new Game of Thrones prequel

Game of Thrones prequels are busting out all over these days. The second season of House of the Dragon premieres on HBO next month, Max is readying another prequel called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and development is "heating up" on a prequel about Aegon the Conqueror, the man who took over the Seven Kingdoms some 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones and became the first Targaryen king of Westeros.

There is no guarantee that this show will actually make it to the screen; HBO is just looking into the idea, tapping The Batman: Part II screenwriter Mattson Tomlin to develop the idea alongside A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. That one is very early days where I'm currently writing the script, currently doing a lot of great back and forth with George," Tomlin told Entertainment Weekly.

Like House of the Dragon, which is set over a hundred years after Aegon's Conquest but 100 years before Game of Thrones, the Aegon show would be based on Martin's book Fire & Blood, which is a history of the Targaryen dynasty written in universe by a character named Archmaester Gyldayn. "In speaking to George, it became really clear, 'This is history, treat this like it is what happened,'" Tomlin said. "Unlike the original series, I don't have thousands of pages to go off to adapt. I've got a couple hundred that I'm really focused on, and in those pages of Fire & Blood, there are a lot of clues."

"It kind of turns into doing Napoleon or doing Alexander the Great or doing some great historical figure where we know a lot about the guy. We know where he was, we know who he conquered, we know who lived, and we know who died. That all becomes the plot, and then it becomes my job to go, but what did it mean thematically? How did it feel? What were the emotions when this person died and this person lived? We don't have the context. We don't know what anybody said."

Again, we don't know if this show will actually make it to air. But we do know of one that will:

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will air in 2025

Speaking at the upfronts presentation for Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO executive Casey Bloys said that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will debut sometime in 2025, although he didn't get more specific than that.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on Martin's Dunk & Egg novellas, and is set between the time periods of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones. Dragons have died off and White Walkers are thought a legend, so this will be a more grounded kind of series. It's about a huge knight named Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his diminutive sqiure Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Together, they travel the Seven Kingdoms having adventures and solving problems. It's a quieter show, compared to the bombasity of Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon or, for that matter, Aegon's Conquest.

How many Game of Thrones spinoffs are too many? I don't think we have to worry about that unless and until the Aegon's Conquest show is greenlit. For now, it looks like House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will air new seasons every other year, which sounds comfortable. House of the Dragon season 2 premieres on Sunday, June 16.

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h/t TheWrap