Attention ‘Game of Thrones’ fans: George R.R. Martin has another TV project in the works
The television show “Game of Thrones” will air its final episode in 2018, and some hard-core fans of author George R.R. Martin are already in mourning.
But there’s good news: A television series based on “Wild Cards,” the anthology and novel series edited by Martin that launched in 1986, is in the works and could hit the small screen in the next two years.
“Wild Cards is a series of books, graphic novels, games ... but most of all it is a universe,” Martin explained on his blog, “as large and diverse and exciting as the comic book universes of Marvel and DC (though somewhat grittier, and considerably more realistic and more consistent), with an enormous cast of characters both major and minor.”
“Wild Cards” is set in an alternate-history version of the United States in which an alien virus hits Manhattan in 1946 and spreads across the world.
“Of those infected, 90% died horribly, drawing the black queen,” Martin writes. “9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1% became blessed with extraordinary and unpredictable powers and became aces. The world was never the same.”
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The television series will be produced by Universal Cable Productions, which is owned by NBC Universal. The company has produced several television shows, including “Being Human,” “The Magicians” and “Mr. Robot.”
Melinda M. Snodgrass, Martin’s assistant editor and a book and television writer, is an executive producer of the project along with Gregory Noveck of Red, Slow Learner and SyFy Films.
“Of course, Hollywood is Hollywood, and nothing is ever certain in development,” Martin wrote, “but I think I hope I cross my fingers that the Wild Cards will be coming to your home screens in the next year or two.”
Martin wrote that he won’t be involved in the show, as he has an exclusive development deal with HBO, the network that airs “Game of Thrones.”
He also noted that he’s working on another project: his long-awaited novel “The Winds of Winter,” the sixth book in the “Song of Ice and Fire” series (known to television watchers as “Game of Thrones”). Martin is still working on that book, and its release date has not yet been announced.
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