{"id":375819,"date":"2026-01-17T20:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T20:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/375819\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T20:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T20:54:09","slug":"a-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms-showrunner-talks-thrones-prequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/375819\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Showrunner Talks ‘Thrones’ Prequel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/a> is a different kind of Game of Thrones show, and Ira Parker is a different kind of Thrones-verse showrunner. <\/p>\n

\n\tAs you\u2019ve probably heard, the new HBO<\/a> drama series tells the story of a penniless wandering \u201chedge knight,\u201d Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), and his 10-year-old squire with a secret, nicknamed Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), as they enter a jousting tournament to try and improve their fortunes. The series doesn\u2019t have magic, dragons or big battles. The tone is lighter than the original show or House of the Dragon. Also, at just six episodes, the season is quite short \u2014 and goes by faster than you might think as many episodes are less than 40 minutes long.<\/p>\n

\n\tParker\u2019s credits include the first season of House of the Dragon and Better Things. He comes across like a massive fan of George R.R Martin\u2019s fantasy world who feels humbled and fortunate to have gotten the keys to HBO\u2019s next Westeros kingdom \u2014 and really doesn\u2019t want to muck it up.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe resulting show is a real charmer (read The Hollywood Reporter\u2018s review<\/a>) and a slow burn. Unless you\u2019ve read series co-creator Martin\u2019s novella The Hedge Knight, you\u2019re not going to know how its assortment of characters and story threads relate to one another. But at a certain point along the way, the story elements suddenly come rushing together and the result is thrilling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re not throwing a kid out of a window in the very first episode,\u201d Parker says. \u201cBut just, like, give us a second.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tTHR spoke to Parker for this week\u2019s cover story profile of Martin<\/a>. Below is a more expanded version of some of his spoiler-free comments about the show \u2014 and how he knows of 12 secret Dunk and Egg tales for potential future seasons.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you pitched your vision for this to HBO, what did you say that you think helped get you the gig? Aside from, presumably, \u201cIt won\u2019t be expensive.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tI actually don\u2019t think I pitched for this. They just gave it to me. [HBO drama head Francesca Orsi] sent me a text or email at four o\u2019clock in the morning: \u201cWhat do you think about Dunk and Egg?\u201d And I spent a week just getting everything together. I had 15 pages of things that I was going to pitch to them and have this big, long conversation. Then when I got on the phone with them and realized I already had the job. I just immediately shut my mouth.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe biggest thing that was very helpful was learning the show didn\u2019t have to be 10 episodes, one hour each. Being able to do six episodes, anywhere between 30 or 40 minutes, was perfect for us. It meant we didn\u2019t have to stretch the story. It meant that we could do a faithful adaptation of this \u2013 which obviously is very much what George wanted, and what I was very keen to deliver one because I\u2019m a big fan of these novellas. This way, the stuff we did add doesn\u2019t feel tangential. It feels like it\u2019s filling out these novellas in a way that hopefully George would have done if he had just written them as novels instead of 80-page nuggets.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt feels like just the right length. What kind of insight did George give along the way that was valuable?<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, just having George be available whenever you need him is very helpful. He and I had a lot of conversations early on. I spent a weekend in Santa Fe with George when HBO had brought this up to just have a conversation and see how he feels about all this. After that went well, I came back for a full week.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, George puts together these writer summits for all the potential shows. <\/p>\n

\n\tYeah it\u2019s George and some of his favorite authors. We spent some time together, just breaking it all out and throwing ideas around. It was one of the most fun, creative weeks I\u2019ve ever had in my whole career. Then I went away to write the pilot and George was there any every step of the way. He was very supportive and he read the first drafts of every episode, and he gave me pretty timely feedback \u2014 he didn\u2019t pull any punches. He was always very open to conversations. In my very first meeting with George, even before I officially had the job, I promised him I wouldn\u2019t put anything in that he didn\u2019t want. But it\u2019s never come to that. He\u2019s pushed back on a lot of things. I just explained the reason why I wanted to do something, and then he would explain his reasons why I\u2019m an idiot.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo the first season had a modest budget for a Thrones show. Do you think with season two \u2014 based on Martin\u2019s second Dunk and Egg novella, The Sworn Sword \u2014 you\u2019ll be allowed to expand the scope a bit more? Will it still be six episodes?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019ll still be six episodes. I think the scope will be same, maybe even smaller. The budget has stayed the same, but everything is more expensive due to inflation. Plus, book two takes place in a drought, so we can\u2019t shoot exteriors in Belfast. We have to go to a sunny location with no water, which costs money \u2014 that\u2019s a major expense that we did not have in season one. I\u2019m having a lot of fun season two. It\u2019s going to be a different season, and, I hope, for the better.<\/p>\n

\n\tI sure you\u2019re going to be happy not to be freezing in Belfast in a field for three months though.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m in Belfast right now and, yeah, it\u2019s cold. But I\u2019m from Canada and I get a couple weeks every winter where it\u2019s minus 30 degrees. This is pleasant! <\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I was talking to George, he was stressing about how he\u2019s only written three Dunk and Egg novellas which would cover three potential seasons. So are you concerned that, like with the original show, that Knight will get ahead of the books? <\/p>\n

\n\tEven though we don\u2019t have the ins and outs of every story, we know canonically the major beats of Dunk and Egg throughout their lives. So we wouldn\u2019t necessarily run into the same trouble as the flagship did. And George has outlined 12 more of these stories that he\u2019s shared with me. These stories take them all the way through their lives. Some of these are just a paragraph, but they give you a sense of where they\u2019re going to go and the people who come back in and out of the story.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd, look, I hope everybody likes this and I hope we get to do more. But I don\u2019t have a crystal ball. I actually don\u2019t know \u2014 in spite of how long I\u2019ve been doing this \u2014 what it is that audiences really respond to. Everybody likes to think they know, right? But at the end of the day, we are Game of Thrones without all the stuff. We have some trees and we have some horses. What was it [that made the original show a hit]? Was it the dead coming to kill mankind? Was it the dragons? Was it the politics? Seeing a different family every week? Or just the epic-ness of the original and of House of the Dragon?<\/p>\n

\n\tOr is it the hope that I have? We have one of the ingredients: Two unusual characters \u2014 like Arya and the Hound, or Brienne and Podrick \u2014 who are paired together and having conversations. I hope that\u2019s what [made Thrones work]. It\u2019s a big part of what it was for me. So I hope we get to make as many of these as possible. I would say HBO\u2019s plan is for us to do the three novellas, and that\u2019s it. But I would do 12 of these. I would do four now, then four more 10 years from now, and then four more 10 years after that \u2014 take them all the way through their lives and just like [Richard Linklater\u2019s Boyhood].<\/p>\n

\n\tTo me, Dunk and Egg is one of those concepts in the canon where you can go on and on because the story is not intensely serialized. Each is a stand-alone, anthology style adventure.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. Is there anything else you want to know about George? He\u2019s just the loveliest. Honestly, I think of him like a friend now. He\u2019s really sweet and been nothing but a benefit. He cares about his people.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, he definitely cares a lot about his characters. <\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, and that\u2019s probably why these shows have done so well. He really does push people in a good way. But I actually meant he care about his people \u2014 not his characters. The people around him. He\u2019s just got a lovely group of people. He really wants everybody to do well and succeed.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor more on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, see this week\u2019s Hollywood Reporter cover story: Heavy is the Crown: Inside George R.R. Martin\u2019s Triumphs and Torments<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a different kind of Game of Thrones show, and Ira Parker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[83319,96,59,1636,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-375819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-a-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-hbo","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}