HBO sets ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoff for 2022, ‘The Last of Us’ adaptation pushed to 2023

If you’ve been marking your calendar for two of HBO’s most anticipated new shows, then you need to pick up another calendar, because one of them won’t be hitting the airwaves until 2023.

Deadline reports the long-awaited Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon will debut later in 2022, which is where it had been originally scheduled, though the network was tentative to set a solid date for fear the pandemic might derail production and delay it. It’s also been confirmed that big-budget, live action Playstation video game adaptation The Last of Us will not arrive this year, and is now expected to bow in 2023.

The news comes via HBO and HBO Max Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys, who confirmed the network is looking at the schedule to figure out exactly when the series should premiere. Production has now wrapped, so the network is feeling more confident in slotting the next chapter in the Thrones saga.

“One of the reasons why we’re trying to be cautious about it is when you’re shooting a show that big during a pandemic, especially with the last round [with] a lot of crew and cast members… you didn’t know who was going to drop out or if we’re going to have to shut down so we just didn’t want to declare a date and then find ourselves shut down,” he told Deadline. “Now that we are out of production, I think that we will talk to their guys and figure out what we want to do in terms of announcing a date. But I was just trying to make sure that we didn’t come out with a date that we couldn’t meet for something that was out of control out of our control.”

House of the Dragon is set long before the events of Game of Thrones, and is produced by franchise creator George R.R. Martin, as well as Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik. The series stars Matt Smith, Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Rhys Ifans, Fabien Frankel, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best and Sonoya Mizuno.

As for all those rumored Game of Thrones spinoffs, Bloys noted some projects are “looking good,” though they obviously won’t make everything, and there’s apparently no mandate for getting a particular amount of these off the ground. So, aside from House of the Dragon, no other Thrones news for now.

As for The Last of Us, the post-apocalyptic saga based on the hit Playstation video game series is still shooting in Canada, and Bloys confirms the show will not air in 2022. So go ahead and mark that one in for some point in 2023.

“I have seen some early episodes and Im very excited,” Bloys added about the project. “[producer] Craig [Mazin] did Chernobyl for us, he is a fantastic writer and director. What I’ve seen looks amazing so I’m excited for it but it will not be in ’22.”

HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, Gabriel Luna, Nico Parker, Jeffrey Pierce, Murray Bartlett and The Last of Us voice actress Merle Dandrige.