Summary

A Knight of Seven Kingdoms
will premiere in 2025, focusing on a knight and his squire in the
Game of Thrones
universe.
Production on the series was halted due to the recent strikes impacting multiple film and TV projects.

House of the Dragon
remains unaffected, with the second season set to continue as planned for a summer 2024 release.

The next spinoff in the Game of Thrones saga, A Knight of Seven Kingdoms, will now debut in 2025, it has been confirmed. During Warner Bros. Discovery’s most recent earnings call (via IGN), CEO David Zaslav revealed the release window for the series, which will be set before the events of Game of Thrones and follows a knight and his squire.

“George R.R. Martin is in pre-production for the new spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which will premiere in late 2025 on Max,” Zaslav revealed during the call.

The series currently has several working titles in contention, including A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Tales of Dunk and Egg, and The Hedge Knight. You can check out the official synopsis for the spinoff below.

“A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros: a young, naïve, but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.”

Related George R.R. Martin Gives Details About Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Spin-Off The author had some things to say about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.

Numerous productions across film and television were recently impacted to varying degrees by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. With writers picketing outside several studios and sets across the country, many projects have seen considerable setbacks. Per a report from Deadline, one of those did include HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Coming straight from author and executive producer George R.R. Martin himself, production on the show was completely stopped for the duration of the strike.

Martin took to his official blog to relay the latest on the strike’s impact across the industry, including the production of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and expressed his adamant support of the picketing writers and what to expect in the days and weeks ahead.

“The writers room on
GoT
spinoff
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Night
has closed for the duration…No one wanted this — no writer with an ounce of sense, anyway — but the producers and the studios and the networks and the streamers gave us no choice…The Guild negotiated right up to the final deadline on May 1, but it takes two to tango. In the waning hours of May 1, the Writers Guild of America declared a strike. The action began on May 2. There are pickets in front of every studio lot and sound stage in LA, and many in other cities as well. Get used to them. I expect they will be there for a long time.”
“I am not in LA, so I cannot walk a picket line as I did in 1988, but I want to go on the record with my full and complete and unequivocal support of my Guild.”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to be the next high fantasy epic from HBO, based on George R.R. Martin’s Hedge Knight novellas, which are encapsulated within the proclaimed Game of Thrones universe. They star two main characters “Dunk and Egg”, or the future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Aegon V Targaryen, who would eventually become king. In the overall timeline established so far by the series adaptations, this latest spin-off takes place not long after the greatest travesties happen in House of the Dragon and several decades before the beginning of Game of Thrones.

How the Strikes Have Impacted Other Game of Thrones Spin-Offs

While Knight of Seven the Kingdoms is facing setbacks, production on the second season of House of the Dragon has since been confirmed to be unimpeded by the recent strikes. All eight episodes have been written and re-written, and the process is continuing as planned. As noted by George Martin also on his blog:

The scripts for the eight s2 episodes were all finished months ago, long before the strike began. Every episode has gone through four or five drafts and numerous rounds of revisions, to address HBO notes, my notes, budget concerns, etc. There will be no further revisions.”

This ensures that the second season, which is set to initiate the catastrophically tragic Dance of the Dragons after the events during the first season’s finale, will be sticking to its early summer 2024 release.

Aside from that, there is no word on how any of this has impacted HBO’s preliminary discussions about the planned Aegon the Conqueror spinoff, if it did at all. Given that the network currently has two others on its plate in varying stages of production for the next couple of years, it’s rather likely that future project won’t see any conflict from the strikes. George Martin’s blog can be viewed here.