George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards Series Passed on by Peacock

Peacock is no longer all-in on George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards. The Game of Thrones creator on Monday revealed that NBCUniversal’s streaming service passed on the planned live-action adaptation of the sci-fi superhero stories, which was in the works at Disney-owned Hulu before moving to Peacock in 2021. In an update published to his official blog, Martin revealed the status of several projects amid the ongoing writers’ strike that has halted work on television shows and movies across the industry. That includes HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, which has temporarily shuttered its writers’ room for the duration of the WGA Strike. 

According to Martin: the second season of Dark Winds, which he executive produces, has already wrapped, and won’t be impacted by the strike. HBO’s House of the Dragon, the Thrones prequel co-created by Martin based on his book Fire & Blood, will also continue production and move forward with scripts that were completed before the WGA voted to strike on May 2nd. One show that won’t be moving forward is Wild Cards, and the potential series won’t search for a new home until the strike has ended.

“Peacock has passed on Wild Cards, alas.A pity,” Martin wrote. “We will try to place it elsewhere, but not until the strike is over.”

Comcast-owned Universal Cable Productions — behind the 2004 Battlestar Galactica revival and Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy — acquired the rights to Martin’s Wild Cards series of anthologies and mosaic novels in 2016. In a blog post, Martin wrote at the time that “development will begin immediately on what we hope will be the first of several interlocking series.”

Spanning more than 25 novels and 20 short stories written by the “Wild Cards Trust” of authors that includes Martin, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Stephen Leigh, John J. Miller, and Walton Simons, Wild Cards tells the story of an alternate history where Earth is home to super-powered individuals. When a human is infected with the alien ‘Wild Card’ virus, the odds are that they will draw the black queen — be killed — or become ‘jokers,’ those left with strange mutations, or ‘aces,’ who are gifted with superpowers they can use to become heroes or villains.

Wild Cards was previously adapted as two four-issue limited series by Disney-owned Marvel Comics, including 2022’s Wild Cards: The Drawing of Cards.