He may be tall, but Dunk’s adventures could mean HBO’s future in Westeros looks a little smaller in scale than initially planned.
Ever since Game of Thrones came to its controversial end, HBO has had grandiose plans, in scope and scale, for what it wants to get out of telling more stories in Westeros and beyond. But for all that epic dreaming, it turns out that the quiet success of one of its intentionally smaller shows could turn all that on its head.
That show is, of course, the ongoing Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which, despite its oversized hero in the form of Ser Duncan the Tall, has charmed audiences with its lighter, more intimate take on the world of Game of Thrones—a story that is about ordinary people getting by underneath and away from the grand politicking of the realm, rather than huge wars and giant, mythical monsters. It’s not just audiences that are charmed, though. Apparently HBO head Casey Bloys is, too.
“If you think about the novellas, it’s a two-hander. It’s two unlikely friends and heroes wandering Westeros. From its inception, from the starting point, it is not warring families, it is not dragons, it is not giant battles. So the creative made sense first, and then the production follows,” Bloys recently told Deadline of the show’s source material, making the case for a project that is smaller in scope.
