Brian Helgeland’s illustrious Hollywood career includes winning an Oscar for writing “L.A Confidential,” directing Heath Ledger’s beloved 2001 comedy “A Knight’s Tale” and scripting films such as “Man on Fire” and “Mystic River.” It also could’ve included a “Game of Thrones” spinoff series had HBO moved forward on his pitch, which was titled “Ten Thousand Ships” and centered on Queen Nymeria.
“It came out great, but I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original,” Helgeland recently told Inverse about his spinoff. “That’s why it hasn’t been picked up yet, but nothing is ever dead. My script was based on Queen Nymeria and this little blurb about her that was in a Westeros encyclopedia.”
“Essentially, it was the story of Moses but swapping him out for Nymeria,” he continued. “Her country gets ruined and her people are forced to live on the water, which is why the show was called‘Ten Thousand Ships.’ They end up having to leave and find a new home like the Israelites leaving Egypt. She’s leading all these people, trying to hold everyone together but things are always in danger of falling apart as they travel around a fictionalized version of the Mediterranean, looking for a new home to settle in.”
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Helgeland’s involvement in a “Game of Thrones” spinoff was revealed as early as 2017, a few years before the flagship HBO series came to an end. In May 2021, screenwriter Amanda Segel was hired as a writer on the series. But the show never got an official greenlight from HBO, although Helgeland maintains “nothing is ever dead.”
“Their life was nomadic. Living in a raft city that was bound together, this big floating city,” Helgeland said about his plans for Nymeria and her people in the spinoff. “Sometimes, the characters would come ashore, but they ultimately get driven off the land as they search for a home, their version of the promised land.”
“I met with George R.R. Martin to pitch him the idea, which he signed off on. Sadly, I didn’t work with him closer, but I would have done if the show was picked up,” he continued. “It was kind of like Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films mixed with ‘The Odyssey.’ In a way, Nymeria is Odysseus, but instead of a 12-person crew, she’s responsible for every citizen in this floating city-state. My work is still there if HBO wants to pick it up. I enjoyed my time developing it, and you just never know.”
“Thrones” already has one spinoff series that made it air thanks to “House of the Dragon,” which returns for a second season this summer. A second spinoff series, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight,” recently announced its main cast members (Peter Claffey has been cast as Dunk, while Dexter Sol Ansell has been cast as Egg) and is set to go into production later this year. One planned spinoff that is not moving forward is a “Thrones” sequel series centered on Kit Harington’s Jon Snow.
“I hadn’t really ever spoken about it, because it was in development,” Harington toldScreenRantabout the spinoff earlier this month. “I didn’t want it leaked out that it was being developed. I didn’t want the thing to happen where people kind of start theorizing, getting either excited about it or hating the idea of it, when it may never happen. Because in development, you look at every angle, and you see whether it’s worth it.”
He continued, “And currently, it’s not. Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough. So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being. There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf.”
Head over to Inverse’s website to read Helgeland’s full interview.
