Game of Thrones: Hedge Knight Prequel Gets New Director, Title, and Episode Count

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight has a brand-new director. Owen Harris, director of Black Mirror‘s delightful “San Junipero” will step up to direct the first half of Season 1 according to The Hollywood Reporter. Fans also got some new information about the episode count and a shortened title for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Interestingly, this new Game of Thrones spinoff will be six episodes for Season 1 instead of the planned 10 episode entry. That might make for a more focused effort in the spinoff’s early days. For the first few chapters, Harris will steer the ship before settling back and letting other creators take the reins to close out Season 1.

Obviously, HBO is ecstatic to be adapting another work from George R.R. Martin. Here’s how the network and streamer describes the upcoming series: “A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros. A young, naive but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age where the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Thone and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destines, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.”

HBO Continues To Build Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones just keeps on trucking with numerous spinoff shows in development. HBO has been trying to inform fans about the shifting timetables for these projects. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is a little more unique than some of the other branches from this franchise. HBO remains focused on producing stories in this universe according to Francesca Orsi, Head of Drama for the network.

“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,” HBO’s Drama Chief explained about the larger Game of Thrones universe. “You may know based on the novellas that dragons don’t exist so by virtue of that it will be a faster piece to turn around given that we don’t have all these visual effect assets needing to deliver.”

“[It would] ideally [be] year-to-year and arcing out a three-season series, which maps out the three novellas that George wrote,” 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.”

Will you be watching House of the Dragon this season before Hedge Knight? Catch all of our pop culture discussion at @ComicBook on social media!