HBO spent $30 million on a Game of Thrones spin-off that was scrapped

(Image credit: HBO)

Game of Thrones was the biggest show on television, so it's no wonder HBO spent big on trying to deliver a spin-off. Unfortunately, the first attempt at a new show set in the world of Westeros was not a success – and ended up costing the network $30 million as a result.

Jane Goldman, best known for penning the first Kingsman movie and X-Men: First Class, wrote a pilot episode for HBO, with S.J. Clarkson (Succession, Jessica Jones, The Defenders, Dexter) as director. Naomi Watts was cast in a leading role, with the show set to take place thousands of years before the main Game of Thrones saga, showing the origins of the White Walkers and much more.

In a new book by James Andrew Miller, former WarnerMedia entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt revealed that the first episode alone cost a staggering amount of money. "They had spent over $30 million on a Game of Thrones prequel pilot that was in production when I got there," Greenblatt said in the book, titled Tinderbox (via Insider).

"And when I saw a cut of it in a few months after I arrived, I said to [HBO boss Casey Bloys], 'This just doesn't work and I don't think it delivers on the promise of the original series.' And he didn't disagree, which actually was a relief."

"So we unfortunately decided to pull the plug on it," Greenblatt continued. "There was enormous pressure to get it right and I don’t think that would have worked."

"[They're] very, very, very different. Finch is two actors and a dog. House of the Dragon is lots of dragons and lots of actors. [Laughs] They're very different experiences," Sapochnik said.

"But the practice is the same if you're a director, which is I always ask myself in any project that I'm involved in, whose story is it? Whose point of view is it? What am I trying to say, and is that getting in the way of telling the story? So I approach things from the same perspective. I think that making Finch was a welcome respite from making Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. But it doesn't mean that I wasn't on set now and then, with an RV and a dog and a couple of actors, and I didn't wish that I had a dragon there too."

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.