There might be a slight change to the planned "Game of Thrones" prequel "The Long Night." HBO doesn't think this should be the show's official title.
"Game of Thrones" author and "The Long Night" executive producer George R.R. Martin confirmed in an interview with The New York Times that HBO executives told him the title is not yet official. But it was the series developer and creator Jane Goldman who picked the title when she was writing the material. Martin has not yet revealed what HBO plans to call the new series so, for now, he will keep referring to it as "The Long Night."
In the "Game of Thrones" folklore, the Long Night is referred to as a dark time in the world before Westeros came to be. It's a period of strife and difficulty that lasted for a generation.
The prequel takes place several thousands of years before the events of "Game of Thrones," and it will involve characters that fans of the highly successful show have never heard before. While there will be no mention of the Targaryens, the Starks and the Lannisters in this new series, some fans speculate that "The Long Night" will be about a Stark ancestor.
Martin also said that Goldman had slim references to pick from his "Game of Thrones" book series since any mention of "The Long Night" was just a few sentences among the thousands of pages that have been published. The famous author said that Goldman ran everything when she prepared the prequel so his inputs for "The Long Night" were mostly for the sake of consistency.
Last October, HBO announced that Oscar-nominated actress Naomi Watts would lead "The Long Night." She will play a "charismatic socialite" with a deep, dark secret. However, further details to her character have been tightly kept under lock and key. As with the original series, HBO is careful with revealing the plot to their potential moneymaker.
Joining Watts is British actor Josh Whitehouse as the other unnamed lead character. The rest of the cast has not yet been confirmed, but Goldman and her team are still actively looking for more actors in London, according to Screen Rant.
Filming for the prequel is scheduled to begin around February 2019 in Belfast. Incidentally, this Ireland city has been the official home base of "Game of Thrones" for the last 10 years. "The Long Night" is expected to premiere on HBO sometime in 2020 or a year after the final season of "Game of Thrones."
