HBO had hoped they could continue the success of Game of Thrones by following it up with a prequel series set during “Age of Heroes” and the first ever battle between man and White Walker. Jane Goldman wrote the pilot, which was filmed this past summer.

And while everything looked like it was on its way to a full series order, this latest news says otherwise. New reports confirm that HBO has killed off the Game of Thrones prequel. More on the report below.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that HBO didn’t approve of the final cut of the pilot episode, and wanted edits to be made. But ultimately, they decided to just cancel the project.

Had the premium cable network followed through with it, Goldman would have acted as showrunner on the untitled Game of Thrones prequel series which would have starred Watts, Miranda Richardson, Joshua Whitehouse, Marquis Rodriguez, and more, in a story set long before the events of the original HBO series.

The series would have explored a period of Westeros history when the Seven Kingdoms did not even exist, and when the continent was separated into dozens of kingdoms and would have featured key figures in Game of Thrones lore like Bran the Builder and Lann the Clever.

However, the report says that the spinoffs and prequels remain a top priority for HBO. For their part, HBO gave the greenlight to the Martin and Ryan Condal’s prequel, which is set 300 years before the events of the original series. It focuses on the beginning of the end for House Targaryen.

It’s interesting to hear that HBO would be canceling the series with such a great cast and a promising angle. However, it does tell us that the pilot itself was very disappointing. So disappointing that they had to kill it so that they could stop the bleeding before it got worse. HBO has also been commissioning a number of writers to pen scripts for potential series that could fill that Game of Thrones void, and this prequel was one of the first to be greenlit. Maybe we will find out more about the others or learn about what made the pilot so bad that HBO had to shelve the prequel before fans could ever see it.

Of course, we will keep you up to date on all of the Game of Thrones spinoffs and prequels as soon as new developments come in.

[Source: THR]