George R.R. Martin says new Game of Thrones prequel will be out in early 2025

The other week, HBO released the first image from a new Game of Thrones prequel series called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg novellas. Peter Claffey plays a Ser Duncan the Tall, a young knight who lives up to his name. The Dunk and Egg novellas team him with the young Egg, played by Dexter Ansell. Together, they travel the Seven Kingdoms having adventures.

Martin has written three Dunk and Egg novellas so far and has plans to write many more, although given how slow he's been to write the next book in his Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, fans would be forgiven for doubting whether he can follow through on that promise. In any case, HBO is adapting the first of those novellas, The Hedge Knight, into a six-episode miniseries to air early in 2025.

Or at least that's according to George R.R. Martin himself, who just wrote about the new show on his Not a Blog. He's serving as an executive producer on the series and will visit the set sometime in July. Filming started in June.

If A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms does indeed premiere in early 2025, that'll be a quick turnaround for a Game of Thrones show. House of the Dragon, which is airing its second season right now, wrapped up in September of 2023 and didn't premiere until this month. But A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is significantly less technically complex than House of the Dragon. For one thing, there aren't any actual dragons around during this time of Westerosi history (the Dunk and Egg novellas are set decades after the events of House of the Dragon and decades before the events of Game of Thrones), which means far less time laboriously rendering them in post-production.

For another, there will only be six episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as opposed to eight or 10 of House of the Dragon, and it's possible those will be on the shorter side. As Martin admits in his blog post, there's simply "less source material" to work with. The Dunk and Egg novellas are fairly short and punchy, and the tone is a lot lighter than Game of Thrones fans may be used to.

If we're in for another two-year wait between new seasons of House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms could help fill the gap. We'll keep an eye out for an official release date from HBO.

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