George R.R. Martin Reveals His 'Game of Thrones' Series Pitch That HBO Turned Down

Though Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin should be busy writing the final two books in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, he was willing to sit down for a new interview to discuss what's been going on with him since the end of the HBO show.

The 70-year-old author spoke with JOE at the Irish Film Institute this week, and explained that, after the show concluded this May in a very controversial ending, he's been pitching prequel and sequel ideas to the network.

The surprising part is that not all of his pitches have been approved by HBO. Martin explained that he tried to get them to make an anthology series called Spear Carriers about the common folk of Westeros, but they didn’t seem interested. He recalled:

“I pitched it to HBO but they didn’t seem enthused about it. I always wondered when you write these scenes, there are other people in the background and I often wondered about them. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? They’re about to go into battle to. Are they enthused about it? What happened after the battle? How did it affect their lives?...For example, show Tyrion giving his speech before battle but instead of following him into the battle, follow one of the guys that’s hearing the speech. What happened to him?”

While we're not sure if any of Martin ideas have been considered by HBO, so far it has been confirmed that one prequel series is in the works from showrunner Jane Goldman, which will star Naomi Watts, Toby Regbo, Sheila Atim, and others. The working title is reportedly Bloodmoon.