Back in 2019, HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 8 was one of the most impressively successful events in the history of television (depending on who you ask). With its conclusion after just 6 episodes, HBO announced that not one but two spin-off shows were being made to continue the show’s legacy. One of those stories was House of The Dragon: a prequel story that focuses on the complex history of the Targaryens. The other was a series that focused on the White Walkers and their origins. What happened to the other spin-off show, you may ask? The short answer: it got cancelled. This is the story of why Bloodmoon or The Long Night, a Game of Thrones series with one of the most expensive pilots ever, will never see the light of day.
What Was Bloodmoon About?
As you may know, the events that take place throughout Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are only fragments of the massive world of storytelling that George R.R. Martin has crafted over the years. Characters usually reference events that happened decades or even centuries before and how they influenced everything that’s happening to them now.
A character that acted as a constant threat throughout was the Night King and his army of undead wights – seen in Game of Thrones and prophecied about in House of the Dragon. The mythology behind him and the White Walkers was the subject of constant online debate and speculation – all of which was dismantled when the Night King met his end in the most disappointing way possible.
The White Walkers’ absurdly fast defeat was one of the things that spoiled the last season of GoT for die-hard fans. You can’t simply hype a villain for an entire 8 season show and beat them in a single episode – and with minor casualties at that.
Bloodmoon was supposed to be a prequel that went into further detail about the White Walkers and their origins. However, explaining the backstory of a group of villains that were defeated faster than some minor characters would have been a waste of time, energy, and resources for HBO, something that the channel noticed way before they concluded the production of the show’s pilot. Worst of all, it wasn’t based on the books.
In his interview with The New York Times, George R.R. Martin stressed that The Long Night prequel was “mostly” the creation of Jane Goldman. “If you look at the published books so far, there’s really very little material about [the Age of Heroes and the Long Night] — a sentence here, a sentence there. Old Nan tells a tale that takes up a paragraph. So Jane had to create the characters, the settings and some of the events, and we had to look at everything that was said and say, ‘O.K., here’s what was said at this point, we need to make it consistent to that.’ We kicked around some ideas and I made some suggestions. But mostly it’s been Jane running with it,” Martin said.
Even though the network cancelled the show, that didn’t mean that the production costs weren’t astronomically high, of course.
High Costs, Low Chances
As we’ve previously established, Bloodmoon would have a hard time picking up the pieces left behind by the disastrous ending of Game of Thrones. However, since the show’s production began when it was already high in viewers and fans, the project received a considerable amount of funds to produce its pilot.
It’s estimated that the show’s first episode (directed by S.J. Clarkson) had already spent $35 million in production costs, including the casting of actress Naomi Watts in the lead role (with other cast members like Georgie Henley, Naomi Ackie, Sheila Atim, Ivanno Jeremiah, Jamie Campbell Bower, Denise Gough, Alex Sharp, Toby Regbo and Miranda Richardson announced on January 8, 2019). This would turn Bloodmoon’s pilot into one of the most expensive TV pilots ever produced – and it’s one that might never be seen.
However, stranger things have happened before. We might get to see glimpses of what Blood Moon could have been sometime in the future – especially since HBO’s chief content officer Casey Bloys didn’t necessarily dislike the pilot either.
What HBO Said About Bloodmoon
“It required a lot more invention; it was higher risk, higher reward,” Bloys told THR. “There wasn’t anything glaringly wrong with it. Development and pilots are hard.”
“It wasn’t unwatchable or horrible or anything,” added Robert Greenblatt, the then-chairman of HBO’s parent company WarnerMedia. “It was very well produced and looked extraordinary. But it didn’t take me to the same place as the original series. It didn’t have that depth and richness that the original series’ pilot did.”
Also, there exists some precedent of “leaks” that have shown us more info than we’ve ever thought possible. Maybe whatever’s left of the series pilot will emerge in a leak as it happened with GoT season 8’s scripts. We can’t imagine how a show with dragons, White Walkers, and a budget of $35 million per episode could go wrong. That sounds like a recipe for success.
Tell us, would you like HBO to release the pilot episode for Bloodmoon? Read our spoiler-free review of House of the Dragon Season 2.
