HBO’s Game of Thrones has exceeded all expectations over the course of its run, becoming a bona fide pop culture phenomenon and proving that audiences are hungry for fantasy television.
With the final season set to air in 2019, competing networks are gearing up for shows they think could attract an audience hungry for more swords n’ spells. Amazon has their Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time series in development and Netflix have their spin on Arthurian mythology in Cursed and the Henry Cavill-starring The Witcher. But don’t count HBO out completely, as they’re eager to keep the Thrones fire burning with their as-yet-untitled prequel series.
We know a few things about the upcoming show so far. For one, it’s set thousands of years before the events of the existing series (presumably to avoid stepping on any toes continuity-wise), and will uncover the secret origins of the White Walkers. It should also give us some insight into the Valyrian civilization at its height.
Now, we can add to that pile with these casting notices for the show. They come via Watchers on the Wall, who reveal that the network’s searching for actors to play two men in their 50s, with one to be a black man and the other to a genuine Scandinavian, Germanic, or Eastern European actor. There’s another character in his 20s with that description, too, so perhaps these two could be father and son? The others call for two Caucasian actresses, one in her 20s and the other in her 30s, and a Caucasian male in his late 30s to mid-40s.
So, not a great deal to go on as far as working out what’s going to be happening in the show, but we also know that this casting process began on October 24th and is scheduled to wrap up on November 17th. If the project’s planning to move into full production pretty soon, I’d imagine we’ll get some press releases explaining who’s been cast as whom.
Having said that, HBO will be wanting to keep the final hurrah of Game of Thrones proper in the spotlight, so expect any announcements to be muted until that wraps up sometime over the summer.
