Westeros just got a few new residents. Jane Goodman and George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones prequel pilot is taking shape, with HBO setting S.J. Clarkson (who is helming the next Star Trek movie) as the project’s director and added eight new cast members to a lineup that already includes stars Naomi Watts and Josh Whitehouse.
Newly-cast series regulars include Naomi Ackie (who will next appear in J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars” franchise), Denise Gough (“Guerrilla,” “Angels in America”), Jamie Campbell Bower (“Twilight,” “Mortal Instruments”), Sheila Atim (“Harlots”), Ivanno Jeremiah (“Black Mirror”), Georgie Henley (“The Chronicles of Narnia”), Alex Sharp (“To the Bone”) and Toby Regbo (“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”).
No character details are currently available for any of these parts on the prequel pilot, which is currently untitled (unless you are going by Martin’s recent blog post.) But we do know Watts has been cast as a charismatic socialite hiding a dark secret.
Ordered to pilot last year, the project from Martin and “Kingsman” screenwriter Goldman is set thousands of years before the events of the current “Game of Thrones” series in the era known as the “Age of Heroes.”
According to HBO, the drama “chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend … it’s not the story we think we know.”
Goldman wrote the pilot from a story she developed alongside Martin. She will serve as showrunner and will executive produce alongside Martin, James Farrel, Jim Danger Gray, Vince Gerardis and Daniel Zelman. Chris Symes is co-executive producer.
