George R.R. Martin is heavily involved in the development of the series.
Roughly one month out from the premiere of House of the Dragon Season 2, one writer of a Targaryen-related spin-off series revealed some interesting information about the upcoming show. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mattson Tomlin, who has been tasked with penning the script for the upcoming Game of Thrones spin-off based on Aegon’s Conquest, gave a status update on the development of the show and also talked about where he’s finding inspiration. House of the Dragon is the first spin-off of the hit HBO series which won an unprecedented 59 Emmys during its eight-season run, but there are several other spin-offs confirmed to be in development.
Tomlin gave a promising update on the status of the script for the Aegon’s Conquest series, saying: “That one is very early days where I’m currently writing the script, currently doing a lot of great back and forth with George.” It’s promising to hear that the author and creator of the Game of Thrones universe is heavily involved in the development of the show. While HBO has not officially greenlit the Aegon the Conqueror show, Tomlin is still working to prepare a script to wow Warner Bros. and HBO executives. While House of the Dragon turns back the clock on Game of Thrones, with the former being set nearly 200 years before the latter, Aegon’s Conquest happens roughly 100 years before the ongoing Targaryen spin-off.
Mattson Tomlin Compares Aegon’s Conquest to Napoleon and Alexander the Great
In addition to providing a script update, Tomlin also spoke about the challenges of adapting a series with much less source material to work from than the original Game of Thrones show:
“In speaking to George, it became really clear, ‘This is history, treat this like it is what happened.’ Unlike the original series, I don’t have thousands of pages to go off to adapt. I’ve got a couple hundred that I’m really focused on, and in those pages of Fire & Blood, there are a lot of clues. It kind of turns into doing Napoleon or doing Alexander the Great or doing some great historical figure where we know a lot about this guy. We know where he was, we know who he conquered, we know who lived, and we know who died. That all becomes the plot, and then it becomes my job to go, but what did it mean thematically? How did it feel? What were the emotions when this person died and this person lived? We don’t have the context, We don’t know what anybody said.”
Tomlin and House of the Dragon creator Ryan Condal have a different set of challenges than original Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Both House of the Dragon and the upcoming Aegon’s Conquest spin-off are based on Fire & Blood, which uses the power of multiple perspectives and recollections to tell a story, instead of just one concurrent timeline to detail events. However, along with these challenges comes more creative freedom without being shackled to specific events to adhere to, which must be undeniably appealing to any creator.
House of the Dragon Season 2 premieres June 16. Catch up on the first season on Max ahead of the Season 2 premiere, and stay tuned to Collider for future coverage of the series.
