The Old King, Jaehaerys Targaryen, dies with no clear line of succession. At a Great Council, the realm chooses Prince Viserys as his successor, despite the superior blood-claim of Princess Rhaenys, establishing a precedent that a man's claim to the Iron Throne will always outclass that of a woman. Many years later, Viserys' wife dies in childbirth and he names his daughter and only child, Rhaenyra as his own heir. But when Viserys marries again and sires several sons, the precedent that he benefited from sets Westeros on a course for a deadly clash.
HBO's Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series, was the most successful, most talked-about television show of the 2010s. The disappointing finale aside, the show reset expectations for the scale of stories that could be told on the small screen and single-handedly turned adult, live-action fantasy into a viable television genre. Many fantasy shows have come along since seeking to pick up where it left off, such as The Witcher, The Wheel of Time and, most recently, Amazon's Rings of Power. But HBO itself has now rejoined the fray with a direct spin-off, a prequel set almost 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and charting the division of the Targaryen dynasty.
Perhaps frustratingly for all those other claimants to the fantasy crown, House of the Dragon emerges as the clear successor to Game of Thrones in overall quality. Despite the near-total absence of any of the same creative team from Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon arrives on screen with formidable verve and gravitas. It has the confidence to deal out its storytelling in measured doses, long scenes devoted to characterisation and relationships punctuated by swift bursts of action, dragonfire and violence. The show channels some of the same energy HBO's other great political drama, Succession, as a story of familial drama with vast-ranging consequences, a huge scope examined through a small lens. This gives Dragon some benefits even over its mothership series, with much less rapid transitioning between events separated by thousands of miles, allowing the show to delve deeper into the characters and their motivations.
Dragon still doesn't make things too easy for itself. The first season spans almost three decades, with several shifts in the cast. There's a lot of similar-looking characters with similar-sounding names, many coming complete with their own dragon (some of whom change owners as the story continues). If Game of Thrones had a sin of sometimes shying away from complexity and streamlining A Song of Ice and Fire's scope into something less ambitious, combining characters and (often pointlessly) renaming those with even vaguely similar names, House of the Dragon goes in the other direction, trusting the viewers will follow it along. This stands in especially harsh contrast to The Rings of Power, where at almost every turn the writers instead chose to simplify and streamline things, constantly underestimating the both the intelligence of the viewer and the richness of Tolkien's source material.
Where Dragon overcomes potential hurdles is its constant reframing of the story on the relationship between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower. Childhood friends and contemporaries (in a shift from the source material, where Alicent is older and more ambitious from the off), the two enjoy a strong camaraderie that is upset by politics, especially the yearning ambition of Alicent's father, Otto, Hand of the King. From the perspective of each, both Rhaenyra and Alicent have excellent reasons and sympathetic motivations for much of their actions. Rhaenyra is foolish in having children with something other than her husband, but she is also put in a difficult position by his inability to have children with her. Viserys often makes weak decisions to appease those around him, but he both has an aversion to bloodshed (not necessarily a bad thing) and a deep-seated belief that House Targaryen must marshal its strength against other, greater threats. Even the central argument over whether a woman should sit the Iron Throne delves into the idea of idealism versus pragmatism, what should be conflicting with what actually is.
The casting is exemplary. Paddy Considine plays King Viserys as a peacemaker and a family man who is never happier when sharing good news with his closest friends and family. Realpolitik and discussions of war anger him. Considine is already one of Britain's finest actors and House of the Dragon has finally given him the international awareness of that; his final scenes in the season should ensure him an Emmy nomination, at the very least, next year.
Similarly, Matt Smith shakes off the last vestiges of being Doctor Who to give a performance mixing anger, edgy violence and a yearning for acceptance as Prince Daemon, Viserys' younger, more reckless brother whom everyone fears will plunge the realm into war, but grows over the season into something of a more responsible figure. Smith had already made a great career pulling away from his early signature role and House of the Dragon solidifies his reputation.
Other seasoned hands get some great moments in the sun: Rhys Ifans is excellent as Otto Hightower, giving a human edge to his character's grasping ambition. Steve Toussaint brings a mixture of pride, dignity and passion as Lord Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake. Eve Best is outrageously good as Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, whose historical anger at her own usurping brings an interesting perspective to the current crisis.
The focus of the season is definitely on the two central characters of Rhaenyra and Alicent. Milly Alcock and Emily Carey play the young Rhaenyra and Alicent (in the first five episodes) with a mixture of energy and responsibility. Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke play their adult incarnations (in the latter five episodes) with more nuance and cynicism, but channelling their younger counterparts' mannerisms and expressions in an impressive way.
Production-wise the show is also outstanding. Impressive sets and excellent costumes abound, and the CG is superb, especially anything involving the dragons. The show does make liberal use of video walls (similar to those used on The Mandalorian) and, like a lot of other modern fantasy shows, it sometimes feels a bit unnecessarily fake when real locations are substituted for CGI backdrops that can't help but feel sterile and unconvincing. Dragon goes a step further by faking some of the exact same places that were shot on location in Thrones (most notably the Dragonstone causeway), which makes the fakery even more obvious. However, Dragon does, for the most part, avoid the awful, plastic-looking CGI that blights a lot of modern genre productions, usually with much better use of lighting. Unfortunately Dragon does have a lot of murky night-time scenes and these are almost as badly-lit as the final season of Game of Thrones, with important scenes vanishing in a murky grey soup.
House of the Dragon is not flawless and does make some odd choices, and some outright (but certainly not fatal) stumbles. Several times the show unleashes "rule of cool" nonsense, things that look really spectacular but don't make any sense if you spend five seconds thinking about them: a Kingsguard brutally murdering a guy in front of a room full of witnesses and suffers no consequences; a dragon smashes through a building and kills dozens of civilians and nobody gives a toss; a character throws away a moment where they could end a conflict before it even starts with a minimum of bloodshed (although they later give some semi-reasonable justifications for it); Daemon runs through a storm of arrows and single-handedly fights off dozens of men in a highly improbable manner. In these moments the show teeters on the edge of Game of Thrones Season 7 and 8 silliness, but it always manages to pull itself back from the abyss with its character-focused and character-based dramatic scenes, which is where the meat of the story is.
Season 1 of House of the Dragon (****) is the finest slice of the Thrones franchise since at least the fourth season of the original series, and certainly the finest slice of live-action, epic fantasy TV to air since then as well (despite some other showings bringing much more money to the table). It's character-focused story mixes family and political drama to great effect, with outstanding vfx set pieces and uniformly excellent performances. Occasional jarring jumps in the timeline and events that visually impress but don't make sense logically threaten to undo the good work being done elsewhere, but ultimately the season is a great piece of television fantasy and drama.
The season is available to watch on HBO and HBO Max (and local equivalents) in much of the world, and Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK.
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.
In a wide-ranging article at The Hollywood Reporter, insiders at HBO have spoken for the first time about the various attempts to bring a Game of Thrones spin-off to the table.
HBO reached a deal with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss in 2016 to end the show after eight seasons. Almost immediately HBO began exploring ideas for a spin-off, with an eagerness that surprised industry watchers.
HBO had never made a spin-off show to any of their series before. The closest they had come was around 2005 when a spin-off from The Wire, provisionally called The Hall and revolving around the character of Tommy Carcetti as he became Mayor of Baltimore, had gotten quite far into development before it was canned, and the resulting work was folded into the political storyline in Seasons 4 and 5 of the main show. A few years later HBO bought the rights to remake the BBC TV series I, Claudius and investigated turning it into a spin-off/sequel to its underrated historical drama, Rome, even using the same sets (which were, and still are, standing in a film studio outside Rome) and a similar format. HBO eventually broke their rule by producing two movie extensions to two of their most acclaimed series, Deadwood: The Movie (2019) and The Sopranos: The Many Saints of Newark (2021), but only after the Game of Thrones spin-off train had started moving.
George R.R. Martin himself came up with two ideas: The Tales of Dunk & Egg, based on his novellas about Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Egg, as they wandered the Seven Kingdoms about ninety years before the events of the main series. The novellas mix large-scale politics with much smaller-scale, "slice of life" adventure stories. Martin felt the juxtaposition with the vast scale and epic events of Game of Thrones was interesting. HBO agreed, but also felt that maybe adapting those novellas was aiming too small. Martin's other proposal was for a series called The Dance of the Dragons, about a civil war between two branches of the Targaryens when both sides were equipped with dragons. HBO liked that idea better, but felt conversely it was too similar to Game of Thrones itself. HBO, awkwardly, wanted something that captured the epic scale and politics of the original but was not so obviously related to it.
A number of other ideas were discussed, some of them pretty frivolous. One idea about a team of early heroes, including a warrior, a smith, a crone etc, who become the inspiration for the gods of the Seven Kingdoms was shot down pretty quickly. Other proposals were made, including (according to other rumours) for potential sequels to the main series revolving around popular characters, but Martin seemed largely unenthused by any ideas about sequels and these ideas were also limited by actor availability: many of the actors from Thrones, despite loving it, were only too happy to leave the brutal filming schedule behind to pursue other projects.
HBO eventually narrowed things down to five ideas: The Dance of the Dragons, with Carly Wray attached to write; a show about the Doom of Valyria with the alleged title Empire of Ash from Max Borenstein; a show about the warrior-queen Nymeria from Brian Helgeland; a show about the Long Night from Jane Goldman; and a series about Aegon the Conqueror from Rand Ravich and Far Shariat which would have revealed Aegon as a drunken lout (!).
During this development process Carly Wray decided not to pursue the Dance project, apparently feeling she wanted the series to start with the war kicking off whilst Martin wanted a slow-burn opening much like Thrones, with at least a full season preceding the start of the conflict. Bryan Cogman, who had penned some of Thrones' best-received episodes, was brought in to develop the idea further. However, HBO eventually put all of these other projects on hold to pursue the one that stood out to them: the Long Night project.
The show never had a final title, although The Longest Night was Martin's preferred one. Set five thousand years before the main series, the show would have expanded on the creation of the White Walkers and the advent of the Long Night, a generation-lasting winter in which Westeros was almost destroyed by hordes of undead invading from the far north. During this time Westeros is a patchwork quilt of primitive, Bronze Age-esque kingdoms, some so small you could ride across them in a day, and ill-prepared to withstand such an invasion. The show would have had to create human drama out of characters and ideas from the novels which are larger-than-life legends, like Lann the Clever and Bran the Builder.
HBO gave a pilot order and spent a reported $30-35 million on building sets and hiring a cast led by Naomi Watts and John Simm. The pilot episode, entitled Bloodmoon, was shot but HBO started having second thoughts. There'd been a change in leadership at the company and The Longest Night was seen as a gamble, being very different in tone and atmosphere to Thrones. There were also no dragons, and the epic scale may have been somewhat lost with smaller kingdoms and more primitive castles and towns. The Children of the Forest would also be major, ongoing characters, but they had made relatively little impact on the original show. Martin himself also seemed unsure about the project, as he had relatively little background material or notes about this period of Westerosi history, and was not able to readily or quickly answer lore questions from the writers.
More significant, although nobody at HBO has ever said this, is that the final season of Game of Thrones aired around this time and attracted controversial opinions about its ending. Although many aspects of the final season were criticised, the way the White Walkers were very quickly defeated in a single episode was particularly savaged by both fans and critics. Suddenly basing an entire series around the rise of the White Walkers and in which they were primary antagonists didn't seem like a great idea any more.
The Longest Night was cancelled, apparently a huge shock to the creative team who'd felt so confident about the project that they'd been already re-editing the pilot based on feedback and had started breaking the first season.
Almost immediately after this decision was made, HBO decided to go back to basics. They tapped Martin again and agreed that the Dance of Dragons project seemed like a better idea. Martin had already expanded his history of the Dance as part of an entire book about the Targaryens, Fire and Blood, which meant the production team would have hundreds of pages of source material to drawn upon. The dragons and the civil war in Westeros parts of Game of Thrones had been well-received, so doubling down on those elements seemed obvious. HBO and Martin were also able to quickly assemble a creative team who had their full confidence (Bryan Cogman having moved onto a deal at Amazon, acting as a creative consultant on their Lord of the Rings show before developing an original project). Ryan Condal, a friend of Martin's for around a decade and a proven showrunner from Colony (as well as getting a good rep for a Conan the Barbarian proposal he'd been shopping at Amazon), was tapped to develop the project whilst Game of Thrones super-director Miguel Sapochnik was also hired to work on the show (getting Sapochnik again was seen as a coup, as his work on Thrones had made him a hot property and he'd been somewhat reluctant to return).
Since House of the Dragon entered pre-production, HBO has gotten back into the Westeros business in a big way. They are now developing multiple new spin-off projects, including:
In addition to these, HBO also mulled over an idea called Flea Bottom, a peasant's eye view of great events from the poor quarter of King's Landing, possibly an expansion of an idea Martin himself mentioned several times called Spear Carriers, which would have adopted an alternative Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-style perspective of major events from minor POV characters. These ideas are currently on hold.
A lot is riding on the success of House of the Dragon, but it has assembled a top cast and crew and the project has Martin's approval. HBO may also be buoyed that despite repeated attempts by rivals, no true successor to Game of Thrones has emerged (Netflix's The Witcher may have come closest) in popular media. And it will be interesting to see if any of the other spin-off ideas make it to the screen.
HBO has announced more castmembers for its Game of Thrones spin-off prequel series House of the Dragon.
The big news is official confirmation that Scottish actor Graham McTavish has joined the cast as Ser Harrold Westerling of the Kingsguard. McTavish will be familiar to genre audience from roles in Outlander and the Hobbit trilogy, though old-skool SF fans will recognise him from the eighth season of Red Dwarf way back in the day.
An amusing bit of casting is that Jefferson Hall, who briefly played Ser Hugh of the Vale in Season 1 of Game of Thrones, has been cast twice in House of the Dragon. He will be playing Lord Jason Lannister of Casterly Rock and his twin brother Tyland Lannister. Meanwhile, David Horovitch will be playing Grand Maester Mellos, the king's trusted advisor.
Gavin Spokes has been cast as Lord Lyonel Strong, Lord of Harrenhal and Master of Laws on the King's small council. Ryan Corr will be playing his eldest son, Ser Harwin "Breakbones" Strong, whilst Matthew Needham will be playing his younger son, Larys Strong. The Strongs are a powerful and influential family at King Viserys' court.
The newcomers are joining already-announced castmembers Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, Olivia Cooke as Lady Alicent Hightower, Emma D'Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen, Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, Rhys Ifans as Ser Otto Hightower, Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Velaryon, Fabien Frankel as Ser Criston Cole and Sonoya Izuno as Mysaria.
House of the Dragon begins almost 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, with the Targaryens as the undisputed rulers of the Seven Kingdoms. King Viserys Targaryen has ruled peacefully and well for many years, training his young daughter Rhaenyra to succeed him. However, a late second marriage and the arrival of more children muddles the line of succession, as does the reckless behaviour of the king's brother, Prince Daemon. Despite the king's best efforts, the threat of civil war seems to grow...at a time when House Targaryen and its allies control no less than seventeen dragons.
House of the Dragon is currently shooting in the UK and is expected to wrap before the end of the year, to debut in the spring or early summer of 2022.
Game of Thrones prequel/spin-off show House of the Dragon has added two new actresses.
Milly Alcock (Reckoning, The Gloaming, Fighting Season) and Emily Carey (Wonder Woman, Get Even) are playing younger versions of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, respectively. Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke are playing the adult versions of the characters in the show.
This indicates that the show may have flashbacks, or will start in an earlier time period before moving to the "present day" of the story, during the build-up to the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, when two branches of House Targaryen, both equipped with dragons, clash over the Iron Throne.
Filming of the series is continuing at the Warner Brothers Studios in Leavesden, near London. Recently, a large, red castle facade was seen being built, possibly to stand in for the Red Keep of King's Landing. The show has completed location filming in Cornwall and will move to location filming in Spain and Portugal in the near future. Production is expected to run into the autumn, ahead of a possible spring 2022 debut.
Scottish actor Graham McTavish has been cast in House of the Dragon, HBO's prequel/spin-off to Game of Thrones. It is not known what role he was playing, but he was spotted filming in Cornwall last week, and confirmed his presence there on Instagram.
McTavish is best-known for playing the roles of Dwalin in The Hobbit trilogy, Dougal Mackenzie in Outlander, King Atlan in Aquaman, the Saint of Killers on Preacher and Father Kinley in Lucifer. Other TV roles include Red Dwarf, 24, Prison Break and Rome. He has also provided voices for the animated TV series Duck Tales and Castlevania, and voices for the Uncharted, Call of Duty, Total War, Guild Wars, Ace Combat and Metro series. He will be debuting as the important and fan-favourite character of Sigismund Dijkstra in the second season of Netflix's Witcher series, a role that's expected to recur for the entirety of that show's hoped-for seven-season run.
McTavish is also a published writer, having co-authored the non-fiction book Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other with his Outlander co-star Sam Heughan.
McTavish's role in House of the Dragon is unclear, although he could possibly be playing Lyonel Strong or Harrold Westerling, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard when the story opens.
McTavish's casting on The Witcher may suggest that his role on House of the Dragon may be short-lived, but given that his role, although a regular one, would not be hugely prominent, it's possible that they could schedule his appearances on both shows around one another's needs. The filming bases for the two shows are pretty close together near London.
HBO has unveiled concept art for two of the dragons which will appear in its upcoming Game of Thrones prequel/spin-off, House of the Dragon.
Set 170 years before the events of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon tells the story of the Dance of Dragons, the civil war between two branches of House Targaryen. The Targaryens are at the height of their power at this point in history, with dozens of members across several branches of the family and more than a dozen dragons under their command. The king has named his eldest daughter as his heir, but, upon his death, her ascent is disputed by her younger half-brother, setting the scene for war.
The dragons have not yet been identified, but based on their colouring it's likely the first dragon is Sunfyre, the steed of the would-be King Aegon II Targaryen, whilst the second may be Caraxes, the steed of Prince Daemon Targaryen.
House of the Dragon is currently undergoing casting and pre-production. Paddy Considine was recently announced as King Aegon II, whilst unconfirmed rumours this week have suggested that former Doctor Who actor Matt Smith may circling the role of Prince Daemon.
House of the Dragon will be showrun by Ryan Condal (Colony) and acclaimed Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik, with absolutely no involvement from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff or D.B. Weiss whatsoever. It is expected to start shooting in the UK in the spring for a 2022 debut.
House of the Dragon, HBO's prequel spin-off from Game of Thrones, has its first confirmed castmember.
British actor Paddy Considine will be playing the key role of King Viserys Targaryen, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. At the start of the series - 170 years before the events of Game of Thrones begin - he is seated firmly on the Iron Throne, but his health is ailing and jackals are circling. Viserys has declared his eldest child and sole daughter, Rhaenyra, to be his legal heir and this has been acknowledged by all the lords of Westeros. But since that declaration, Viserys has remarried, to the formidable Lady Alicent of House Hightower, and had several more children. Alicent is intent that her son, Prince Aegon, will take the throne. The two factions at court - the "greens" and the "blacks" - begin recruiting powerful allies.
The political intrigue may sound familiar, but there is a key difference. At this time House Targaryen's dragons are still alive and well, with more than a dozen of them spread between the two factions. In the war to come, the two sides will find they have the ability to inflict far more destruction than in any war in history.
Considine is a familiar face on British television and in film, having played many key roles in films such as This is England, 24 Hour Party People, My Summer of Love, Hot Fuzz, The Bourne Ultimatum, The World's End and The Death of Stalin, as well as TV shows including Peaky Blinders, The Outsider and The Third Day. He has two BAFTA Awards to his name.
The character description for Viserys states that he is the heir of the hugely successful and beloved Old King, Jaehaerys I Targaryen, and is a kind and gentle man who finds that he may not have the temperament to be a powerful ruler. This suggests the show may feature extensive flashbacks over his entire reign.
More casting news is expected over the coming weeks, with key roles including Queen Alicent, Prince Aegon, Princess Rhaenyra, Lord Commander Criston Cole of the Kingsguard and Prince Daemon expected to be cast. The show is expected to debut on HBO in early 2022.
HBO's House of the Dragon, their prequel spin-off to Game of Thrones, is looking to cast the role of Daemon Targaryen.
Daemon Targaryen is the younger brother of King Viserys I Targaryen. Unlike his diplomatic brother, Daemon is a man of action and determination who prefers to solve problems with his sword and the fire of his dragon, Caraxes. His ambition and ruthlessness vexes his brother, whom is often left to clean up the mess left by Daemon's intemperate actions. Daemon was initially insulted and angered when his brother declared his daughter Rhaenyra to be his heir rather than his brother, but more recently Daemon has come to show his niece more affection; both are united in their dislike of the king's second wife, Alicent Hightower, and her poorly-concealed ambitions for her son, Prince Aegon.
HBO is looking for an actor aged between 40 and 50 for the role, available to film between January and December 2021. This matches their plan to get the show on air sometime in 2022.
The show is also looking to cast Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen. If production is really going to start in January (pandemic permitting), I'd be expecting to hear some roles being confirmed fairly soon.
House of the Dragon is based on the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin, and will chronicle the multi-sided civil war known as the Dance of Dragons, which takes place 170 years before the events of Game of Thrones, a civil war in which all sides are armed with dragons. Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik are executive producers and showrunners, with Sapochnik also serving as main director and Condal as the main writer.
Thanks to detective work courtesy of user Zionius via Reddit, more information has come to light about the various spin-off Game of Thrones shows HBO had been working on back in 2017-18.
As we know now, HBO at one point had six Game of Thrones spin-off shows under consideration. They ordered a pilot for one of these shows but then cancelled it - Jane Goldman's The Longest Night (developed under the codename Bloodmoon, likely the name of the individual pilot episode) - and have now greenlit another, Ryan Condal's House of the Dragon, based on an earlier pitch by Bryan Cogman.
The nature of the other four shows has been unclear, although various rumours have surfaced over the years. However, thanks to Zionius analysing material HBO filed with the US copyright office, we now have a better idea.
Spinoff #1 was to be produced by Max Borenstein and Steeplechase Amusements Inc. It was copyrighted on 24 May 2017.
Spinoff #2 was to be produced by Brian Helgeland. It was copyrighted on 6 July 2017.
Spinoff #3 is not shown on the list, but logically must have been copyrighted in July or August 2017 and was to be produced by Carly Wray.
Spinoff #4 was to be produced by October Lodge Ltd. and was copyrighted on 20 September 2017. Based on UK Company House filings, October Lodge is the production company owned by Jane Goldman/Ross, so this was The Longest Night (aka The Long Night aka Bloodmoon).
Spinoff #5 was to be produced by Bryan Cogman and Randy Mailman Productions, and was copyrighted on 6 April 2018. This show morphed via a seventh pitch (so #5 and #7 are the same thing, effectively) into House of the Dragon, the only one of the shows to get a full season order. We also know now that the production company for House of the Dragon "Bastard Sword." HBO plan to shoot this series next year for airing in 2022.
Spinoff #6 was to be produced by HunterFed and Far Shariat and was copyrighted after 8 February 2018. Far Shariat is an experienced TV producer, often working with Rand Ravich, and they have an overall development deal with HBO at present.
So #4 was The Longest Night and #5 became House of the Dragon. So what were the other shows?
Max Borenstein's show - #1 on this list - was reportedly called Empire of Ash and was set 100 years before the Doom of Valyria, and would have been a sweeping historical epic set in both Valyria itself and in the colonies in Sothoryos across the Summer Sea. Going by (massively unconfirmed) rumour, this show had a lot of development done for it which makes sense given it was the longest in development, but HBO was skittish about it because of the high cost of both the dragons and also depicting a much more fantasy-ish setting, with relatively limited direct connections to Game of Thrones. On the other hand HBO liked the similarities to their own, earlier show Rome. Apparently this idea has been moved to a backburner and maybe brought back into play at a later date (Borenstein is primarily working in film as a writer, so may be available later on).
Helgeland's show - #2 on the list - has never been formally identified. In an evasive interview, Helgeland only confirmed that his show was set in Westeros hundreds of years before GoT itself (he also suggested afterwards, but my information is that no show set "hundreds of years" after GoT was ever seriously considered). It is possible to likely that Helgeland's show was the "Aegon's Conquest" series revolving around the Conquest of Westeros by Aegon the Conqueror and the forging of the Iron Throne. Looking further back in the timeline, it's hard to see other events that may have been of interest.
Carly Wray's show - #3 on the list - has also never been formally identified. In this interview she confirms it's a prequel based in Westeros and is based on an episode in the earlier material. It also sounds like her idea was not as developed as others. It's unclear what it might have been (and runs into the same problem as Helgeland's setting). Assuming one of these two shows is the Conquest show, speculation can thus run rampant over the second, since GRRM has confirmed that neither a Robert's Rebellion or Dunk & Egg series was ever seriously considered (GRRM vetoed both ideas early on).
It should be noted that apparently only two of the shows - the Dance of Dragons and the Conquest - were based on material from the book Fire and Blood. That suggests the remaining Westeros pitch was set before the Conquest but after the Long Night. The only event with dramatic potential for a TV show in this time is Nymeria and the Rhoynar's flight from Essos to Dorne, via a hazardous journey through Sothoryos and the Summer Islands, sort of like a fantasy version of Battlestar Galactica. That could have been intriguing.
Spinoff #6 is an interesting one. It was proposed after all the others and seems to have been floated as an idea not long before The Longest Night was given a pilot order. As of May 2020, it was "still in contention," although the producers have since moved on to HBO's J.J. Abrams project Demimonde.
It'll be interesting to see if these other showrunners ever speak up in future about what their ideas would have been. In the meantime, we still have two years before House of the Dragon launches on HBO.
