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"Game of Thrones" showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.
Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss feel that by the end of their "Game of Thrones" run, there won't be much storytelling potential left for a spin-off.
"At a certain point," Weiss told Variety in a recent interview, "especially if it's a serialized story, it falls apart and loses its heat and its momentum because there's a carrying capacity even a world the size of ours has."
Even HBO president Michael Lombardo, who previously hinted at a possible "Thrones" spin-off, is accepting the producers' position on the subject and has changed his tune.
"That's never the way we've done our best work," the executive said of a spin-off. "I can't imagine, if it were not driven by [David Benioff and D.B. Weiss], that that would happen."
After the upcoming sixth season, the producers say they're considering 13 final episodes split between two shorter seasons.
But while Benioff and Weiss are shutting the door on a spin-off, George R.R. Martin, whose "A Song of Fire and Ice" novels are the basis for "Game of Thrones," feels the "Thrones" universe is full of spin-off potential.
Martin said, "Every episode of 'The Naked City' - one of the television shows I watched as a kid - ended with a voiceover: 'There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.' There are eight million stories in Westeros as well, and even more in Essos and the lands beyond. A whole world full of stories, waiting to be told... if indeed HBO is interested."
As for specifics, Martin suggested that "the most natural follow-up would be an adaptation of my Dunk & Egg stories." The novellas, of which there are currently three, take place in the same world as "Game of Thrones," but 90 years before that show's time.