Fans were super disappointed with House of the Dragon Season 2 as all it was, was a bunch of standing around, talking, and a whole lot of nothing happening.
As I correctly guessed as the season progressed, it’s because David Zaslav cut the budget. While not officially confirmed, following the disappointing season finale (to say the least) the showrunner basically confirmed the budget cuts (bold my own emphasis):
“As a showrunner you are always in a position of having to balance storytelling and resources you have available to tell that story,” said Ryan Condal. “We are also starting to think about, what is the final destination of this series and where are we going? A combination of factors led to that re-balance. There is a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes and visual affects needed to give the Gullet, which is arguably the second most anticipated action even to Fire and Blood, the time and the space it deserved. We are building to that event. It will happen very shortly in terms of storytelling. It will be the biggest thing to date we have pulled off. We want to have the time and space to do that at a level that will excite the fans.”
Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin also seemed to further confirm what I said as he chimed in and said that everything has gone wrong with House of the Dragon.
Well, HBO has another Game of Thrones spinoff in the works with A Knight Of Seven Kingdoms and judging what Martin says about the series in his latest blog post, it sounds like more of House of the Dragon Season 2 but with added humor.
Martin says this about the book (admittedly, I haven’t read it):
You may find the tone quite different from that of GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON; smaller in scale, more personal, with more humor, more focus on character… but there is danger and death as well. Lords and ladies and princes it has, but they share the stage with more smallfolk this time around.
He says this about the TV show:
KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS is a smaller show than either GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, with a much smaller budget, but I really want it to be great. Ninety per cent of the story is set in a field, surrounded by tents, we would not need the huge sets the other shows had featured, but it couldn’t look fake or cheap either, and the costumes and the heraldry and the fights all had to be splendid, and…
Martin does go on to say good things in his blog about Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and includes behind-the-scenes images that look cool. However, let’s hope the dialogue is much better than House of the Dragon Season 2. The first two seasons of Game of Thrones (my favorites) had great dialogue and political drama. You can’t say that about House of the Dragon. With Knight of the Seven Kingdoms being smaller in budget and set in a field, it’s going to need great dialogue to hook in the fans. And just think what these shows could have done with all that Joker 2 money? How’d that work out?
