Winter may be coming again—but the creators of Game of Thrones won't be there to see it.
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the co-creators of the HBO dragon slaying epic, will not be participating in the myriad of GOT's spin-offs currently in development.
"It was the best decade of our lives. It still kind of feels a bit like a dream, but we got to a place where it was pretty clear to us that we had reached the end of what made sense for us to be involved with in that world that we lived," Weiss told Entertainment Weekly. "It just felt like, for us, it was time to move on and get excited and terrified about building something else — building lots of something elses."
Game of Thrones premiered on HBO in April 2011, running for eight seasons before wrapping up in May 2019.
Following the finale, the network announced plans for a pilot set thousands of years before the events of GOT. The project, which was supposed to star Naomi Watts, reportedly cost over $30 million and never made it to air. Benioff and Weiss were not involved.
Weiss stands firm that the allure of other projects on the horizon won't be enough to bring them back.
"We never saw more Game of Thrones shows [as] something that made sense for us to be involved with," he said, "given where we were just as people at the time we were done with the original."
The prequel series House of the Dragon is the most imminent. It has finished production and is anticipated to air at some point in 2022. The series, which is based on author George R.R. Martin's 2018 book Fire & Blood and is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, stars Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke and Matt Smith.
In December, Martin revealed that he had seen a version of the show's first episode—and he liked what he saw!
"Mum's the word now, don't tell anyone… I've seen a rough cut of the first episode," he wrote on his website. "And loved it. It's dark, it's powerful, it's visceral… just the way I like my epic fantasy."
HBO has rumored plans for multiple additional spin-offs, all with working titles.
The network is reportedly working on 9 Voyages, which would follow the Sea Snake from the depths of the Seven Kingdom waters. 10,000 Ships, another rumored spin-off, would tell the story of Princess Nymeria. Flea Bottom would depict the area in King's Landing where the most poor and least powerful residents of Westeros live.
And finally, a series based on Martin's book Tales of Dunk & Egg is reportedly in development. The story is set 90 years before the original Game of Thrones series.
While Benioff and Weiss are steering clear of the Game of Thrones universe, they certainly aren't lacking for work. In 2019, the two signed a nine-figure overall development deal with Netflix, with multiple projects currently in development.
We just wouldn't anticipate seeing any dragons.