HBO Eyeing at Least a 3-Season Run for Game of Thrones Spinoff The Hedge Knight

During an extended interview with Deadline, HBO executive Francesca Orsi revealed that the network is looing at a three-season run for the next Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. 

Orsi didn’t reveal a great deal about the forthcoming series, but she did offer an update on its desired length, saying, “ideally year-to-year and arcing out a three-season series, which maps out the three novellas that George wrote.” The George R. R. Martin novellas Orsi is referencing to chronicle the adventures of hedge knight-turned-Kingsguard Ser Duncan the Tall and his trusty squire Egg (later known by a much more famous name) 90 years before Game of Thrones. 

Orsi continued: “Of course, we’d like more beyond that, and George is continuing to think about the remaining novellas that he still wants to write but at this point, we have our eye on three seasons that would map out each book, each novella.”

The Hedge Knight was initially announced in January 2021, with Steve Conrad reportedly hopping aboard as writer and executive producer later that year. HBO officially ordered the series on April 12, just weeks before the WGA strike went into effect.

The first Game of Thrones spinoff, last fall’s House of the Dragon, enjoyed a massively successful first season. While Orsi is optimistic about The Hedge Knight’s potential, she notes that it’s a different kind of series than their first return to Westeros:

“The plan is more of a creative one in that much of the reasoning behind it is that it has a smaller canvas, that there’s an intimacy to the visual canvas that allows us to generate the show faster than say House of the Dragon might turn around because there’s so much VFX.”

Last August, Orsi extended her tenure as Head of HBO Drama Series and Films through 2026.