Game of Thrones movie in the works as Warner Bros. explores jump from TV to silver screen
Very early in the development stages, but Game of Thrones next quest could be conquering the silver screen.
Westeros may already be conquered, but now Warner Bros. is said to be turning the attention of the Game of Thrones franchise to cinemas. A new report states that executives are secretly working up a plan to bring the fantasy series to the big screen.
It’s very much at the beginning stages of the project, according to The Hollywood Reporter — there’s no cast, writer or director attached yet, but the bigwigs at Warner Bros. and HBO are all keen to see the franchise break free of the shackles of TV formats.
It’s not the first time Game of Thrones has been linked to big screen adaptation plans — even the final season of the original show was originally conceived as being three separate films by showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. For better or worse (let’s be honest, it wasn’t for the better) HBO put a block on the plan, preferring to keep its top-tier series locked to its broadcasting schedule. But even Game of Thrones author and creator George R. R. Martin has previously discussed early concepts being thrown about by the studio.
The lines between big-budget Hollywood blockbusters and prestige TV shows are increasingly blurring though, and that sense of protectiveness over the perception of a property jumping from cinema to TV — and vice versa — has diluted.
Amazon’s big budget TV take on the Lord of the Rings looks every bit as luxurious as Peter Jackson’s trilogy, while Matt Reeves’s The Batman has arguably been overshadowed by the incredible Penguin spin-off show. There’s no longer the audience expectation that a property has to be tied to one format or another — consider Soprano’s spin-off movie The Many Saints of Newark, or the upcoming Peaky Blinders film. Even Disney’s at it with Star Wars — The Mandalorian proved Star Wars on the small screen can work, and now the company is hoping it’ll right its wayward feature length ship by turning The Mandalorian into a film series in its own right.
In the meantime though there’s still plenty of Game of Thrones to be enjoying. The House of the Dragon prequel series wrapped its second excellent season this year, while another prequel series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is set to release in 2025. With the prequel era mined, could any eventual film focus on the future of Westeros, post-winter war, instead?