Miguel Sapochnik stepping down as HOUSE OF THE DRAGON co-showrunner

In somewhat surprising news, House of the Dragon's co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik is stepping down from his role on the show. His colleague Ryan Condal will serve as the show's only showrunner moving forwards. However, Game of Thrones veteran Alan Taylor is joining the project as a director and executive producer in Season 2.

According to Sapochnik, he made the decision having spent three years working hard on the project, bringing it to the screen and making it a success. With the show's success assured - the show has seen its audience grow across its first two episodes and has already been renewed for a second season - he has decided to move on.

Taylor is a veteran of numerous TV shows, including Lost, The West Wing and Mad Men, as well as a HBO veteran who has worked on Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, Rome, Carnivale, Big Love, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, and Deadwood. He also directed the Sopranos spin-off film The Many Saints of Newark, and the MCU movie Thor: The Dark World. He directed seven episodes of Game of Thrones across its first, second and seventh seasons. He has won one Emmy Award for his directing and been nominated for two more.

House of the Dragon is currently airing its first season, with the third episode (of ten) due to arrive this Sunday. The series is expected to shoot its second season next year before returning to the screens in 2024.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON renewed for Season 2

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.