Game of Thrones set a new benchmark for how good a show could look; episodes like "Battle of the Bastards" and "The Spoils of War" gave us action scenes that rivaled anything on the big screen. With this came an increase in budget, not just for Game of Thrones but for tons of tentpole dramas that wanted a piece of the pie Game of Thrones helped bake. So we get things like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, one of the most expensive shows ever produced. We get episodes of Stranger Things that run over two hours, and we get shows that go multiple years between new seasons.
There's a good argument that these dramas have gotten too big. Does every show need to be a generational epic that costs a bajillion dollars to make and a bajillion years to shoot? I love Game of Thrones, but it did kind of get us here.
And it also might take us back. A new Game of Thrones prequel show called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will premiere on HBO and Max later this year. Set many decades before the events of Game of Thrones (but decades after the prequel series House of the Dragon), the show will be based on author George R.R. Martin's Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, about a knight (Peter Claffey) and his precocious squire (Dexter Sol Ansell). It's much more intimate than either of those shows. There are no dragons or apocalyptic wars; it's mostly just about Dunk and Egg as they travel the Seven Kingdoms having adventures and meeting people...and that means it's much cheaper to make.
That makes A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms a good fit for a newer era of Hollywood, after studios have realized they all "can’t just spend like a tech company, making as many shows as you can, as fast as you can," as HBO executive Sarah Aubrey put it during a panel discussion with The Hollywood Reporter. Executive Francesca Orsi outlined how this movement affected shows like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms specifically:
"As much as there was a day of budgets being a bit more robust and now, while they continue to be for a number of shows, there are some shows that we’re being charged with making for far less. I have an example that really took me aback. We’re doing a Game of Throne spinoff titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for under $10 million in episode, [which is peanuts] relative to what Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon cost episodically. And the battle sequences that the directors achieved match those across Game of Thrones and are a fraction of the price, so it’s a lesson for us that we need to be challenging these budgets."
What counts as cheap in a world where every show costs a fotune to make?
There are a few caveats to make here. To start, while I have every hope that the battle sequences in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will match the ones in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon for intensity, they are quite simply not as big. The first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on the novella The Hedge Knight, which is set entirely at a tournament in the Reach. People cross swords, but armies don't.
Second, it's a little surreal to hear Orsi talk as though making a season of TV for less than $10 million an episode means it's cheap. Game of Thrones got expensive towards the end, but in its first season it cost only $6 million per episode. By the fourth season that number was up to around $8 million, and only in season 6 — after the show had firmly established itself as a pop culture phenomenon — did it cost $10 million per episode. But now, when shows cost more than that as a matter of course, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms does feel different.
And HBO isn't done shelling out tons of money on the Game of Thrones universe. House of the Dragon is a big success, and they have another "very big-budget" show in development. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a bit of an outlier, but if it's a success, I wonder if it might help turn the temperature down a bit on the overheated TV market.
The first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will run for only six episodes, which feels about right considering the source material but isn't likely to placate fans frustrated that they seem to be waiting longer for shorter seasons of TV. HBO is already laying the groundwork for more seasons, though. Expect the show to debut sometime in the back half of this year.
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