George RR Martin To Start Work On 'House Of Dragon' After Finishing 'Winds of Winter'

Author George RR Martin has made it "perfectly clear" that he will start working on "Game of Thrones" prequel "House of The Dragon" only after he is finished with "Winds of Winter", the long-pending penultimate installment of his "A Song of Ice and Fire" saga. The epic fantasy series, which served as the basis for HBO's multiple award winning show, awaits the final two books -- The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring -- that the author had announced long back but has not yet penned.

On Wednesday, HBO gave a straight-to-series order to "House of The Dragon", a prequel on the Targaryen clan, based on Martin's book "Fire & Blood".

Martin, in his blog on Thursday, said that the new show has been in development for several years, and was "actually the first concept I pitched to HBO when we started talking about a successor show, way back in the summer of 2016".

"I expect to be involved in all of this to some extent... and, who knows, if things work out, I may even be able to script a few episodes, as I did for the first four seasons of 'Game Of Thrones'.

"But... Let me make this perfectly clear... I am not taking on any scripts until I have finished and delivered 'Winds Of Winter'. Winter is still coming, and 'Winds' remains my priority, as much as I'd love to write an episodes of 'House'," the 71-year-old author wrote.

Martin said Ryan Condal, who has created "House of The Dragon" and will serve as showrunner alongside Miguel Sapochnik, had already laid groundwork for the prequel series. 

"Ryan Condal has already done a considerable amount of writing on 'House Of The Dragon', but a lot of work remains ahead of us. There's a writer's room to be assembled, episodes to be broken down and scripted, a cast and crew to be assembled, budgets and production details to be worked out.

"As yet, we don't even know where we will be shooting... though I expect we will revisit at least some of the countries David (Benioff) and Dan (Weiss) used for 'Game Of Thrones' (Ireland, Iceland, Scotland, Croatia, Morocco, Malta, and Spain)," he said.