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George R.R. Martin Offers More Details About Game Of Thrones Prequel Pilot

The Long Night is coming. Or, well, it would be if George R.R. Martin had his say.

On the heels of last week's news that HBO had officially greenlit a Game of Thrones prequel series pilot, author George R.R. Martin — whose A Song of Ice and Fire books are the basis for the hit HBO series — has weighed in about his involvement in the forthcoming series...specifically, that he isn't really all that involved at all.

In a post on his website (via Entertainment Weekly), Martin explained that while he's helped with the new pilot as a consultant, the project is going to be fully spearheaded by Kingsman and Kickass writer Jane Goldman.

"She has been an absolute thrill to work with," said Martin of Goldman. "And my god, what a talent."

Martin also provided a few more details about the show, saying it'll be set ten thousand years before the events of the current Game of Thrones series. The original announcement revealed the pilot would range from the "horrifying secrets of Westeros' history to the true origin of the white walkers," and that it would depict "the world's descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hours." Martin has offered another clue about the story by pitching his own suggestion for what the show ought to be called.

"My vote would be THE LONG NIGHT, which says it all," he wrote, "but I'd be surprised if that's where we end up. More likely HBO will want to work the phrase 'game of thrones' in there somewhere."

That's pretty spooky! But while it's easy to get excited about a new series set in the Game of Thrones universe — especially as we sit through our own Long Night of waiting for Martin to finally publish his next book — there's still reason to approach this project with a healthy dose of caution.

This is a prequel...and prequels are usually kind of a mixed bag, right? Sometimes, when you fill in the blanks on an epic story, all you end up doing is making it a whole lot less epic. Star Wars has a whole mess of prequels of varying quality we can point to for proof on that particular point. It doesn't matter how talented the people involved might be...prequels are trouble.

That said, there's probably no one better to handle a prequel than Jane Goldman. In addition to penning scripts for Kickass and The Kingsman, Goldman also wrote X-Men: First Class, one of the few prequels that actually succeeded where others failed. First Class revitalized the flagging X-Men film franchise when it hit in 2011. If nothing else, that's a sign that "The Long Night" — or whatever it ends up being called — might be the exception to the prequel curse, rather than the rule.