Game of Thrones co-creator doesn't anticipate a return for the spin-offs: 'It was time to move on'

HBO is going all in on the Game of Thrones universe with the upcoming release of prequel series House of the Dragon later this year, as well as multiple spin-offs put into early development. But with all this Thrones goodness coming our way, D.B. Weiss, who co-created the original show with David Benioff, reaffirms their commitment to moving away from the franchise.

"All in, we were 11 years, probably, doing that show. When I say 11 years, it was full on, all in, all day, every day for 11 years," Weiss tells EW in an interview for his upcoming Netflix feature film Metal Lords. "It was the best decade of our lives. It still kind of feels a bit like a dream, but we got to a place where it was pretty clear to us that we had reached the end of what made sense for us to be involved with in that world that we lived. It just felt like, for us, it was time to move on and get excited and terrified about building something else — building lots of something elses."

"We never saw more Game of Thrones shows [as] something that made sense for us to be involved with, given where we were just as people at the time we were done with the original," he adds.

Following the season finale of Game of Thrones, which came to an end in May 2019, HBO started developing a pilot that starred Naomi Watts and was set thousands of years before the events of the first show. But the proposed series never moved forward.

Instead, HBO went with House of the Dragon, which is based on stories told in Thrones author George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, his history of the Targaryen empire. Emma D'Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith, Paddy Considine, Steve Toussaint, Rhys Ifans, and Eve Best feature in the ensemble cast. Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik serve as showrunners.

EW previously reported movement on multiple other spin-offs: Amanda Segel (Person of Interest) is writing a script for prequel series 10,000 Ships, about Princess Nymeria of House Martell; Bruno Heller (The Mentalist) is reported to be working on 9 Voyages, about Corlys Velaryon, a.k.a. the Sea Snake, played by Toussaint in House of the Dragon; The Tales of Dunk and Egg, set 90 years before Game of Thrones; and another prequel set in Flea Bottom.

Weiss and Benioff have since signed an overall deal with Netflix to develop multiple projects. They executive produced series The Chair and are currently filming The Three-Body Problem sci-fi show in London. Weiss also wrote the screenplay for Metal Lords, as shown in EW's first-look photos.

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