Why HBO Buried The $30 Million Pilot For Naomi Watts’ Game Of Thrones Spin-Off

Who remembers Jane Goldman’s “Bloodmoon,” HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel pilot starring Naomi Watts as Morven Casterly? The $30 million project has yet to make it to the screen, as the folks over at HBO and WarnerMedia felt that it wasn’t inventive enough to warrant a full series order.

“It wasn’t unwatchable or horrible or anything,” Robert Greenblatt, the former chairman of WarnerMedia, told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was very well produced and looked extraordinary. But it didn’t take me to the same place as the original series. It didn’t have that depth and richness that the original series’ pilot did.”

“Bloodmoon” was one of several unrealized Westeros-themed projects that entered development when “Game of Thrones” was nearing its finale. Of the bunch, Goldman’s planned series was the only one to have any episodes greenlit until “House of the Dragon” received a full season order in 2019. Despite HBO spending $30 million on a pilot, George R.R. Martin was concerned about “Bloodmoon” from the start.

“Bloodmoon” was set during the Age of Heroes and chronicled The Long Night, so the series would have taken place thousands of years before the events of “Game of Thrones.” Author George R.R. Martin, who made his own contributions to various “Game of Thrones” scripts, hasn’t penned much material about that era, so the project would have required Jane Goldman and the other writers to come up with the story from scratch — a challenging prospect to say the least.

“‘Bloodmoon’ was a very difficult assignment,” Martin told THR. “We’re dealing with a much more primitive people. There were no dragons yet. A lot of the pilot revolved around a wedding of a Southern house to a Northern house and it got into the whole history of the White Walkers.”

Goldman was reportedly shocked about HBO’s decision to cancel “Bloodmoon,” as she was working on making changes to the pilot that had been ordered by the network – seemingly with the goal of getting it right and moving forward with the series. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, and “Bloodmoon” now seems destined to go down in history as a piece of lost media.