George “Rail Road” Martin and HBO are set to be in business together through 2026: The Hollywood Reporter says that he’s signed a major overall deal with the network to develop new projects.
A number of networks have been signing creators to overall deals—locking them and their talent in for a set period of time to develop new projects for said network, giving those showrunners, directors, actors, and writers some stability, while getting a bunch of projects to air on their respective streaming services or networks.
That Martin will stick with HBO isn’t a huge surprise: he’s had a bunch of irons in the fire with the network for a couple of years. In addition to the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, and the ones in development like Dunk & Egg, an animated series, and three potential live-action shows set in Westeros, Martin’s also an executive producer for an adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Who Fears Death, and is doing the same for Roger Zelazny’s 1979 novel Roadmarks. He’s busy elsewhere, too—there are adaptations of his Wild Cards series, In the Lost Lands, and Sandkings in the works at other outlets as well.
Under this deal—which is reportedly eight figures—Martin will continue to develop projects for HBO and its streaming service, HBO Max. Martin has been good for HBO: Game of Thrones was a huge franchise, ratings-wise, and HBO shelling out north of ten million for his continued participation indicates that they’re hopeful that that will happen again in the future.
