Warner Bros. is actively developing a theatrical Game Of Thrones film with Andor screenwriter Beau Willimon.
Well, it’s all right there in the headline, but let’s say it once more: Warner Bros. is currently developing an as-yet-untitled Game Of Thrones movie. As per The Hollywood Reporter, who broke the story, screenwriter Beau Willimon is on scripting duties. A playwright turned screenwriter, Willimon served as showrunner on the first four seasons Netflix‘s House Of Cards, a series we… well, we don’t really talk about that one any more, do we? He also worked on both seasons of Andor. His big screen credits include the pretty good political drama Ides Of March with George Clooney and Ryan Gosling, and the pretty bad historical drama Mary Queen Of Scots with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. At least the latter proves he’s familiar with costume drama histrionics, so we’ll call that a point in his favour.
The film is expected to deal with King Aegon I Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros some 300 years before the events of the original series, with help from his sister-wives, Rhaenys and Visenya, and their dragons. So, plenty of dragons and incest, which should keep the core fanbase happy.
But there are a couple of obstacles that the nascent film needs to hurdle before we can get it into our eyeballs. One is that the production is in direct competition with HBO, who are developing a TV series based on the same material. The status of the series is up in the air right now, but it’s hard to picture both being greenlit. The history of Game Of Thrones is littered with the corpses of works that didn’t make it to production, the most notable being a prequel series with the working title The Long Night. Set 10,000 years before GoT, The Long Night got as far as a pilot starring Naomi Watts before HBO pulled the plug in 2019.
The other issue is, of course, Paramount Skydance’s imminent purchase of Warner Bros., which could gum up the works good and proper. On the bright side, Paramount honcho David Ellison is reportedly a big fan of Game Of Thrones, which makes sense; if anyone can relate to show that heavily features weird looking oligarchs with the moral restraint of a hungry boa constrictor in a neonatal ward, it’s that guy.
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