George R.R. Martin announces big change to ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel

nme.com:

HBO Game of Thrones prequel series, Nine Voyages.Martin took to his blog on New Year’s Eve (December 31) to update fans about his upcoming projects with HBO. “As it happens, HBO and I have our own animated projects, set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire,” Martin wrote. “None of them have been greenlit yet, but I think we are getting close to taking the next step with a couple of them.”The author stated that the last round of development for new television series took place “a few years back”, with him and the HBO team emerging with “four ideas for animated shows”, though half of these ideas were eventually canned. “Writers rooms and summits, outline and scripts followed in due course… but, alas, two of the original projects were subsequently shelved,” he admitted.At this point in the blog, Martin assured fans that the remaining two projects have remained in development, before announcing that Nine Voyages has become an animated series: “Meanwhile, we have moved Nine Voyages, our series about the legendary voyages of the Sea Snake, over from live action to animation.

A move I support fully,” he wrote.He acknowledged that developing the series as a live-action programme would incur astronomical costs, and that animation was a better medium through which the world of the series could be explored.“Budgetary constraints would likely have made a live-action version prohibitively expensive, what with half the show taking place at sea, and the necessity of creating a different port every week, from Driftmark to Lys to the Basilisk Isles to Volantis to Qarth to… well, on and on and on,” Martin added. “There’s a whole world out there.