George R.R. Martin spent his New Year’s Eve updating fans on his animated projects that will be set in the world of A Song of Ice & Fire. He also had one big change to share regarding Nine Voyages, the Game of Thrones spinoff about the great voyages at sea made by Corlys Velaryon aboard the Sea Snake ship.
“We have moved Nine Voyages, our series about the legendary voyages of the Sea Snake, over from live action to animation,” Martin wrote on his personal blog. “A move I support fully. Budgetary constraints would likely have made a live action version prohibitively expensive, what with half the show taking place at sea, and the necessity of creating a different port every week, from Driftmark to Lys to the Basilisk Isles to Volantis to Qarth to… well, on and on and on. There’s a whole world out there. And we have a lot better chance of showing it all with animation. So we now have three animated projects underway.”
Back in 2021, Deadline reported that HBO was looking to expand its GOT universe by developing a trio of ideas for new projects. They included 9 Voyages aka Sea Snake, Flea Bottom and 10,000 Ships. Of the three, the Sea Snake project was more fully formed, with a creative team on board to develop it. There was also talk of developing an animated version of Game of Thrones for HBO Max.
As for the status of his other animated projects at HBO, Martin wrote on his blog that “none of them have been greenlit yet, but I think we are getting close to taking the next step with a couple of them. When this last round of development started a few years back, we had four ideas for animated shows, with some great talents attached. Writers rooms and summits, outline and scripts followed in due course… but, alas, two of the original projects were subsequently shelved.”
“Those of you who have read my reports in years past may recall that I prefer to say “shelved” rather than “killed,” as nothing is ever dead for good in Hollywood, and a project put on the shelf one year can be taken off the shelf a few years later,” Martin continued. “I still have hopes of presenting the stories that we shelved in another form, perhaps as graphic novels.”
“Will any of them make it to air? Happen? No way to know,” he wrote. “Nothing is certain in Hollywood.”
