No Game of Thrones prequel spinoffs will arrive until 2020 at the earliest

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Game of Thrones season 8 won't air until 2019, and even though it's only six episodes long that doesn't mean spin-off series will be quick to follow. HBO original programming president Casey Bloys revealed in an interview with IndieWire that the network will give the original show at least a year of buffer time before any more debut. In other words, don't expect to sit down for some prequel murder-and-connivin' sooner than 2020.

"They're all on different schedules," Bloys said. "They didn't start at the same startlines, so we're at different stages, but I'm very encouraged by what we've seen. I don't have a timetable when we're going to make decisions on anything. I could make between zero and five. Probably more likely around one."

Just because HBO's working on ideas for a bunch of Game of Thrones spin-offs doesn't mean all - or indeed any - of them will make it all the way to the small screen. But at least Bloys had enough charity in his heart to say he and the rest of the team will probably greenlight at least one of them. Probably. Beyond the brass-tacks concerns of production schedules, Bloys also said that it's important to ensure the looming prospect of spinoffs doesn't lessen Game of Thrones season 8 as a proper ending.

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"What I don't want to do is detract from the final season," Bloys explained. "The final season has to air as the huge event in the TV season that it is. I don't want to cheapen it with a spinoff airing right after it. That would diminish the achievement of how big and meaningful the show is."

For more on the future of Game of Thrones, check out the new spinoff George R.R. Martin's working on that is set during "a very exciting period of Westerosi history."

Images: HBO

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.