‘Game of Thrones’ movie in early development at Warner Bros.

HollywoodReporter

Warner Bros. has been quietly developing at least one film set in George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy universe, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Multiple sources describe the project as very early stage development, with no filmmaker, cast or writer yet attached. But the company is keen on exploring the idea of Westeros invading cinemas.

The move might represent a shift in the company’s strategy regarding the property. The showrunners of the original Game of Thrones series (David Benioff and Dan Weiss) famously wanted to conclude the series with three feature films instead of its 2019 final season. Martin was also keen on the idea of a movie and the author told The Hollywood Reporter back in 2014 that concepts were being kicked around. But for a long time, HBO strongly resisted the idea and instead wanted to preserve the prestige series as an HBO property.

Since the end of the original series, however, there have been countless changes to the company’s executive ranks (with HBO now headed by Casey Bloys and the film studio led by Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy), as well with the film versus TV landscape — including an increased willingness to shift cinematic properties to the small screen and back again. There has been Matt Reeves’ box office hit The Batman launching its acclaimed HBO spinoff The Penguin, Max’s upcoming Dune: Prophecy TV series following the success of Denis Villeneuve’s two films, HBO prepping a new take on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels as a TV series, and Warner Bros. developing new Lord of the Rings movies even as Amazon unfurls its The Rings of Power TV show. In short: The idea that a genre property needs to be either a movie or TV show has become outdated, so it’s unsurprising that Thrones might be the next property to cross mediums.

In 2022, HBO launched the hit prequel series House of the Dragon, which recently aired its second season. The network also has the upcoming prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms planned for 2025. There are other ideas in development, as well. One tantalizing unexplored territory remains storylines set after the original series, as all the filmed successor projects thus far have been prequels.

Thrones content has occasionally appeared in theaters before, with HBO having previously given major episodes of the original series limited screenings around the country to help promote the show.