Despite running a blog called “Not A Blog,” George R. R. Martin is just like us: when things happen, he must post about them online.
Martin’s latest blog post congratulates playwright Eboni Booth on winning a Pulitzer Prize for her play “Primary Truth.” But it’s not just because he’s a nice guy — it’s because the two are working together on a new Game of Thrones series for HBO.
“Never having won a Pulitzer Prize myself, I am at a loss to explain why the medal shows Ben Franklin rather than Joseph Pulitzer, but Eboni has promised to fill me in after the ceremony,” he wrote. The author then revealed that the two had been working on Ten Thousand Ships, a new pilot in the GoT universe.
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.
This isn’t the first attempt to bring Ten Thousand Ships to the screen. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland first penned the series back in 2017. Earlier this year, Helgeland was still hopeful. “It came out great, but I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original,” he recently told Inverse about his spinoff. “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.”
The upcoming series does not have an expected release date, but it will probably take some time to wrangle all of those ships together… and then pay for it.