"Winter is coming" is arguably the most iconic phrase associated with George R.R Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice novels as well as HBO's live-action adaptation, Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, despite the mostly successful run of the fantasy drama series, GRRM could still not be bothered to release his sixth novel. The good news is that Martin has not completely forgotten about furthering his best-selling series, as per the most recent update on his website.
In his latest blog post, the highly successful author talked about how fast 2021 went by for him and how much work he was able to do.
After paying homage to the friends and celebrities that passed away in 2021, Martin confirmed that he is "still working on THE WINDS OF WINTER." He added that the constant reassuring is starting to become "wearisome", explaining that he made "a lot of progress on WINDS in 2020, and less in 2021" before clarifying that "less" doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't make headway. More importantly, Martin teased that he is heavily involved with a handful of spin-offs for HBO that is based on ASOIAF, including animated ones.
Of course, the most prominent of these projects is House of the Dragon, which stars Matt Smith and Olivia Cooke, among others. Martin specifically singled out the project in his blog post, saying that he has loved everything that he has seen so far. The elusive author also confirmed that House of the Dragon had already finished filming in London and is now in post-production.
Unfortunately, just like the canceled Fleabottom spin-off, Martin cannot confirm if all the live-action and animated shows in development for HBO and HBO Max will see the light of the day. All Martin could say is that he hopes that "a number of these shows will get on the air" and that some of the ideas "are quite different in tone and approach than what has gone before."
Game of Thrones burst into the mainstream in 2011 after the series was adapted for TV by HBO in 2011. The show ran for eight seasons, occasionally deviating from the novels before eventually running out of source material. Despite Game of Thrones' widespread success, fans couldn't help but feel disappointed at how everything ended. As the showrunners had caught up with the books, the events of the final two novels will be far from what was shown in Game of Thrones.
In addition to House of the Dragon, fans can look forward to The Golden Empire animated series as well as an adaptation of Tales of Dung & Egg.
