George R. R. Martin, creator of the “Game of Thrones” franchise, says there may be a new spinoff to look forward to.
In a blog post on Tuesday, the author and producer said that playwright Eboni Booth is “working on a new pilot” for “Ten Thousand Ships,” a series that screenwriter Bryan Helgeland recently said he’d been attached to before HBO scrapped the project. (HBO declined to comment on whether “Ten Thousand Ships” is in development.)
Congratulating Booth for her recent Pulitzer Prize win, Martin wrote, “She’s an amazingly talented young playwright, and a joy to work with; when not writing and producing her prize-winning plays on- and off-Broadway, she has been kept busy by me and HBO, working on a new pilot for TEN THOUSAND SHIPS, a GAME OF THRONES spinoff about Nymeria and the Rhoynar. We’re all very excited about this one… though we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for ten thousand ships, three hundred dragons, and those giant turtles.”
Booth won the Pulitzer for “Primary Trust,” her 2023 play that starred William Jackson Harper as a bookstore worker. Her other plays include “Paris,” “Crazy Annie” and “Nonfiction.”
In an April interview with Inverse, Helgeland said his “Ten Thousand Ships” script “came out great, but I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original. That’s why it hasn’t been picked up yet, but nothing is ever dead. My script was based on Queen Nymeria and this little blurb about her that was in a Westeros encyclopedia.”
Explaining his version of the series, he continued, “Essentially, it was the story of Moses but swapping him out for Nymeria. Her country gets ruined and her people are forced to live on the water, which is why the show was called ‘Ten Thousand Ships.’ They end up having to leave and find a new home like the Israelites leaving Egypt. She’s leading all these people, trying to hold everyone together but things are always in danger of falling apart as they travel around a fictionalized version of the Mediterranean, looking for a new home to settle in.”
