‘House Of The Dragon’ Showrunner Says New Series Has A Different Tone From ‘Game Of Thrones’

The show will have its own tone!

Lord of the Rings House of the Dragon Game of Thrones George R.R. Martin HBO Max Matt Smith Olivia Cooke

House Of The Dragon co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik has revealed that the upcoming prequel series will have a different tone from Game of Thrones.

Back in 2019, Game of Thrones ended on what many considered to be a low note, and has remained a controversial subject among fans and critics. Despite this, the series is still HBO’s most popular program in history and holds the record for most Emmy-winning primetime drama of all time with 59 wins. It was inevitable that the franchise would continue in some way with prequel shows in development before the series even wrapped up.

Originally a prequel starring Naomi Watts was in development that was said to explore the origins of the White Walkers thousands of years before Game of Thrones began. For reasons that have not been made entirely clear, HBO axed that show before House Of The Dragon was given a straight-to-series order. Earlier this month, HBO released the first trailer for the upcoming series, spotlighting Matt Smith’s new character.

In a recent interview, House Of The Dragon co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik talked about the upcoming show and revealed that the upcoming series would have some tonal differences from Game of Thrones:

“I think we were very respectful of what the original show is. It wasn’t broken, so we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. House of the Dragon has its own tone that will evolve and emerge over the course of the show. But first, it’s very important to pay respects and homage to the original series, which was pretty groundbreaking. We’re standing on the shoulders of that show and we’re only here because of that show. So the most important thing for us to do is to respect that show as much as possible and try and complement it rather than reinvent it. And I was involved in making the original show, so I feel like that’s been useful. Like, I’m not arriving going, ‘Let’s change everything! Let’s do a different color palette!’ No, I quite like the color palette.

That said, we can’t say, ‘Well, when we did Thrones, we did it this way …If you start every sentence with that, you’ve lost. This is something else, and should be something else. It’s a different crew, different people, different tone. Hopefully, it will be seen as something else. But it will have to earn that — it won’t happen overnight. Hopefully, fans will enjoy it for the thing that it is. We’ll be lucky if we ever come close to what the original show was, so we’re just putting our heads down and getting on with it and hoping what we come up with is worthy of having a Game of Thrones title.”

Here is the synopsis for House Of The Dragon:

Based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, the series will tell the story of House Targaryen (a.k.a. the House that gave us the Mother of Dragons herself, Daenerys Targaryen) and take place 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones.

Miguel Sapochnik will serve as the showrunner with Martin and Ryan Condal. House of the Dragon stars Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, and Paddy Considine, Rhys Ifans, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, and Sonoya Mizuno.

House Of The Dragon is set to premiere in 2022. Stay tuned for all the latest news surrounding the Game of Thrones prequel and be sure to subscribe to Heroic Hollywood’s YouTube channel for more original video content.

Trey Griffeth

Trey Griffeth

Lover of video games, comics, and movies! Writer of all things that involve them!