In unsurprising news, HBO has renewed House of the Dragon for a second season. The news comes after the debut episode of the series scored 10 million viewers in the USA, making it HBO's biggest-ever premiere event. This is fully five times the audience that parent show Game of Thrones itself achieved back in 2011.
In the week since the show premiered, HBO have reported that the audience has doubled across repeat broadcasts, legal downloads and streaming via HBO Max, effectively bringing total viewership to not far off what Game of Thrones was achieving when it went off-air in 2019.
Season 2 of House of the Dragon is likely to start shooting early next year in the UK, for a likely early 2024 premiere on HBO. House of the Dragon is employing massive amounts of vfx and post-production which will likely prevent it from airing annually, as Game of Thrones managed to do for most of its run. However, House of the Dragon is envisaged as around a three-season project adapting just a few chapters from George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood. HBO has not ruled out developing House of the Dragon into a sort-of anthology series which could then jump back or forwards in time to another point in Targaryen history.
The news is also likely positive for the numerous other Game of Thrones spin-off shows currently in development. At the moment HBO is actively developing The Tales of Dunk & Egg with writer Steven Conrad, The Nine Voyages of the Sea Snake with Bruno Heller, The Ten Thousand Ships with Amanda Segel, Snow with producer-actor Kit Harington, and an animated show set in the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, but has not yet greenlit any of them.
Amazon are readying their own fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, to launch next Friday, whilst Netflix's The Sandman has enjoyed massive success, but apparently won't get a renewal decision for a few more weeks due to the show's high cost.
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