- The Game of Thrones spinoff/prequel known as The Long Night will no longer be moving forward at HBO.
- Naomi Watts (Twin Peaks, The Ring) was set to star.
- It's unknown what HBO's plan for future Thrones programming is at this time.
If the five months since the conclusion of Game of Thrones has felt painfully long, well, there's some bad news: it's going to be a lot longer until anything Westeros-related hits your HBO screens again. According to a report from Deadline, the Game of Thrones prequel/spinoff, commonly referred to as The Long Night, will no longer be moving forward.
Filming for the spinoff, which would've starred Twin Peaks and The Ring star Naomi Watts (an Academy Award-nominee), wrapped this past summer, but according to the Deadline story, showrunner Jane Goldman has been "e-mailing the cast and crew of the project to tell them that the pilot is dead." The show was said to be set around the early days of the White Walkers, possibly looking at the origin of The Night King.
The pilot was co-created by Goldman, an industry veteran who wrote both Kingsmen movies, and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin himself. The story cites rumors of extended post-production issues following the show's shoot in Northern Ireland.
Coincidentally, the news arrives on the same day that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners for Game of Thrones, announced their departure from a planned trilogy of Star Wars films. They cited their big Netflix contract as the reason for their departure.
When The Long Night was first greenlit back in Summer 2008, it was chosen among several other Thrones spinoff options; with the project now dead, one would imagine that HBO will go back to the drawing board in hopes of continuing their massive Thrones-based success. Asecond sequel, centered on the history of the Targaryen family, is still believed to be in production.
