With the eighth and final season of Game Of Thrones coming up, networks are trying to tap into that massive fanbase any way they can. HBO is developing prequels and spin-offs, Amazon is developing a similarly huge Lord Of The Rings franchise in an attempt to attract a similar audience, and now Hulu is getting in on the act as well.
Variety reports that they are planning to develop two separate series based on George R.R. Martin‘s Wild Cards, the long-running sci-fi anthology series he edits and alongside writer Melinda M. Snodgrass.
The series has been running since 1987’s collection of 22 short stories. Since then, 26 more Wild Cards collections have been released, featuring 41 different writers across 4 different publishers. Each story is set in an alternate version of the United States where an alien disease re-wrote the DNA of a large part of the population, leading to a society of superpowers, mutations, and class war.
Low Chicago and Texas Hold’Em were released earlier this year and are the most recent entries. It’s unclear exactly what Hulu plans to do with the material, but one expects a kind of anthology series adapting multiple short stories, combined with perhaps a longform show which takes some of the Wild Cards ideas and expands them into a longer narrative.
Martin and Snodgrass will be executive producers on the shows, as will Game Of Thrones producer Vince Gerardis. Martin is currently hard at work on the long-awaited Song Of Ice And Fire sequel Winds Of Winter, and while he toils away on that, this is just the latest small screen project he has added his name to as his writing remains incredibly popular.
One is the upcoming SyFy series Nightflyers, which is based on Martin’s 1980 novella of the same name, while he’s also involved in the Game Of Thrones prequels being set up at HBO, including the one from Kingsman writer Jane Goldman which is set to star Naomi Watts.
With this mad dash to snare a chunk of the large Game Of Thrones fanbase, it will be interesting to see which network comes out on top, and whether fans look for something very similar to their beloved show in the form of prequels, or hunt for something a little different but with a similar vibe, such as this.
#Peace.Love.WildCards
