According to Deadline, HBO has quietly pulled the plug on the Game Of Thrones prequel pilot that was written by Jane Goldman and would’ve starred Naomi Watts. HBO hasn’t made an official announcement, but Goldman has apparently been “emailing the cast and crew of the project to tell them that the pilot is dead.” We’ve been hearing about this show since before regular Thrones ended, including the fact that it would’ve taken place thousands of years before the start of the original show, and at the time it seemed like the many other Game Of Thrones spin-off projects that HBO was considering had all been canned in favor of focusing on Goldman’s project. Also, we kind of skimmed over this, but Naomi Watts had already been cast in the lead role as a “charismatic socialite hiding a dark secret.” Now we’ll never know what that secret was!
Deadline says there had been “rumors about issues” during filming and the pilot had gone through a “lengthy post-production” process. The story also points out that the original Game Of Thrones pilot had a number of issues itself, requiring the whole thing to be rewritten and reshot before HBO would move forward with the full series. We heard back in September that HBO was working on a separate Thrones prequel about the downfall of the Targaryen family, which theoretically sounds more manageable since it would be a little closer in time period to the original show, but there’s no word on if that project is moving forward.