Westeros

Back in 2018, it was announced that George R.R. Martin‘s novella-turned-short-YA-novel, “The Ice Dragon”, had been optioned by the Warner Animation Group (now known as Warner Bros. Pictures Animation) as a possible feature film. Since then, occasional updates from GRRM have revealed it has stayed in development all that time, with his most recent update last year indicating that author David Anthony Durham—a writer of historical and fantasy fiction, and also a contributor to Wild Cards—was working on the script.

However, in the last year or two, the animation division of WB has been going through a similar belt-tightening as other divisions of what is now Warner Brothers Discovery. When the news came three weeks ago that a completed animated feature, Coyote vs. ACME, from WB Pictures Animation was cancelled, it made us revisit the Starling Inc. site of GRRM’s media production partner Vince Gerardis, as The Ice Dragon had been listed there for years. It was, at that time, still listed as an Upcoming project.

But it seems that’s no longer the case, a change that seems to have happened no later than November 25th.

Is A Song of Ice and Fire in development at someone not named HBO? Strangely, that may be the case from something we uncovered following yesterday’s post on some recent development updates.

This led us to some digging and and we discovered that Vince Gerardis’s new company Startling Inc. has an official website with a long, long list of various literary works that are in development at various studios, networks, and production companies. As an science fiction and fantasy fan, a lot of the titles are familiar—works by Robert Silverberg, David Eddings, Kim Stanley Robinsion, Larry Niven, Greg Bear, and more are all represented. But Three of these are of special interest to fans of George R.R. Martin: Wild Cards, Sandkings, and something titled A Song of Ice and Fire without HBO explicitly linked to it.

A fan-made ASoIaF logo from artist Ertaç Altınöz