HBO “Going Big” On Its Budget For Game Of Thrones Spinoff Series

There is life beyond Game of Thrones season 8.

Speaking at a panel titled “The Best of HBO” on Tuesday, Francesca Orsi, the network’s senior VP of drama, touched base on what the future holds for Game of Thrones in 2019 and beyond, and it seems as though HBO plans to bring the big guns when it comes to those mooted successor series.

George R.R. Martin, the creative mastermind behind A Song of Ice and Fire, is actively developing each spinoff alongside their respective writers, which tells us that the first should be ready to take flight in 2020 – exactly one year after the premiere of Thrones‘ eighth and final season. Whatever the case, the final product will seemingly boast the same production values as its fantastical forebear.

$50 million (per season) would never fly for what we are trying to do. We are going big.

Orsi went on to assure viewers that the final season won’t disappoint, all the while reaffirming that the final table read reduced many of the show’s leading players – Kit Harington (Jon Snow) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) included – to tears.

It was a really powerful moment in our lives and our careers. None of the cast had received the scripts prior, and one by one they started to fall down to their deaths. By the end, the last few words on the final script, the tears just started falling down. Then there was applause that lasted 15 minutes.

The eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been tentatively slated for a premiere in April of 2019, which is one year after Westworld‘s second installment boots online.