The "Game of Thrones" franchise will live on with a highly anticipated sequel series — just the latest in a string of spinoff programming inspired by the popular HBO show that spanned eight seasons.
What Happened: Kit Harington will return to the role of Jon Snow in a live-action series, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter.
The show marks the first sequel in development of the popular series that aired on HBO, now a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery WBD.
The final season of “Game of Thrones” showcased a development for Harington’s character that could be further explored and spin the story forward. By venturing into the future, the spinoff may feature other popular characters from the original “Game of Thrones” show that were still alive at the end of the series finale, which aired on May 19, 2019.
The highly anticipated prequel series, “House of the Dragon,” is set to air on HBO and HBO Max beginning Aug. 21, 2022. That storyline is takes place 200 years before the original series, and is being touted as the most anticipated new television series for 2022 by iMDb, a movie database owned by Amazon.com Inc AMZN..
HBO has some eight “Game of Thrones” projects in various forms of development. It remains to be seen whether they will each make it to the production finish line.
Related Link: Move Over Netflix, HBO Max Gaining Subscribers And Market Share
Why It’s Important: The Hollywood Reporter compared the move by HBO to one seen recently with The Walt Disney Company DIS, which began producing shows revolving around Star Wars and Marvel characters for its Disney+ streaming platform.
HBO and HBO Max have been strong performers for Warner Bros. Discovery ever since a deal with AT&T T wrapped earlier this year.
In the most recently quarter, HBO and HBO Max had 76.8 million global subscribers and 46.8 million U.S. subscribers. The totals were up by 3 million and 1.8 million respectively — a stark contrast to the loss of 200,000 subscribers Netflix Inc. NFLX reported for the same time period.
Over the past 12 months, HBO and HBO Max have added 12.8 million subscribers. HBO is likely counting on the popularity of “Game of Thrones" to bolster those numbers.
Price Action: Warner Bros. Discovery shares opened at $13.94 on Friday and were up about 4.9% by midday.
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