As the highly-anticipated House of the Dragon season 2 premiere nears, Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin is breathing new life into another potential prequel series set in the rich world of Westeros.
Ten Thousand Ships, which chronicles the journey of the warrior queen Princess Nymeria, has been revived with an acclaimed new writer at the helm.
In a promising update on his blog, Martin revealed that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eboni Booth has boarded the long-gestating project to pen a new pilot script for HBO.
“She’s an amazingly talented young playwright, and a joy to work with,” Martin gushed about Booth, who just won the prestigious Pulitzer in May for her play Primary Trust.
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.
Set a millennium before the events of the original Game of Thrones series, Ten Thousand Ships would depict the epic migration of Princess Nymeria and the surviving Rhoynar people as they flee from Essos to Dorne after suffering a devastating defeat by the dragonlords of Valyria.
The prequel was one of five successor show concepts that HBO originally commissioned from different writers when wrapping up Game of Thrones in 2019. While most never materialized, Martin’s tongue-in-cheek update suggests the network still has grand ambitions.
“We’re all very excited about this one…though we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for 10,000 ships, 300 dragons and those giant turtles,” the author quipped, nodding to the series’ promised scale and marine-based journey.
With HBO already doubling down on expanding the Game of Thrones universe through the renewed House of the Dragon and the greenlit prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Ten Thousand Ships could become the next epic chapter to make it to the screen under Booth’s prestigious guidance.
As the franchise’s devoted fans well know, the journey to bring George R.R. Martin’s imaginative worlds to life is often a long and winding road. But the addition of Booth’s fresh voice and vision bodes well for finally setting sail on this particular voyage through the depths of Westeros’ rich, untapped history.
