'House of the Dragon' has already been renewed for second season

The show's premiere drew 9.98 million viewers, making it the largest audience for any new original series on HBO

LOS ANGELES:

House of the Dragon, the highly anticipated Game of Thrones prequel, has been renewed for a second season after its first episode proved a hit.

Based on George R R Martin’s Fire & Blood, the drama is set 200 years before the events that played out in Game of Thrones and focuses on how the House of Targaryen falls into civil war. It begins with King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) deliberating who should be his next heir — his brother Prince Daemon (Matt Smith) or his daughter Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy).

“Fire reigns. House of the Dragon has been renewed for Season 2,” the show’s official Twitter account said.

Fire reigns. #HouseoftheDragon has been renewed for Season 2. pic.twitter.com/6CxhzC7SKv

— House of the Dragon (@HouseofDragon) August 26, 2022

HBO's return to Westeros and its prequel show's addictive blend of scheming dynasties, gory violence and arguably gratuitous sex, has boasted solid numbers and drawn generally warm praise from critics.

The show's premiere drew 9.98 million viewers in the United States, making it "the largest audience for any new original series in the history of HBO," the television network's owner, WarnerMedia, said in a statement earlier this week. Game of Thrones ran for eight seasons between 2011 and 2019, and other spin-offs are in the works. 

Some analysts noted that that title drew a whopping 17.4 million viewers to the debut of its final season. Still, the House of the Dragon premiere represents a success for newly merged Warner Bros Discovery, which is under intense scrutiny as it tries to navigate the rapidly changing entertainment landscape dominated by the so-called "streaming wars."

On September 2, fierce competition will arrive in the form of The Rings of Power, another swords-and-dragons-themed epic of the small screen, this time taking place in J R R Tolkien's Middle Earth, and created by retail giant Amazon's own streaming platform Prime Video.

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