A Song of Ice and Fire mastermind George R.R. Martin has finally offered his thoughts on HBO developing several new Game of Thrones series based in Westeros… and beyond.

In a massive LiveJournal blog post on Sunday night, Martin served up several interesting tidbits about the new series that are in the works. Here are some easily-digestible highlights:

• First of all, George doesn’t want us calling them spinoffs. They are all prequels. “Every one of the concepts under discussion is a prequel, rather than a sequel. Some may not even be set on Westeros. Rather than ‘spinoff’ or ‘prequel,’ however, I prefer the term ‘successor show.’ That’s what I’ve been calling them,” he says.
• The goal with all of the series is to make them as good as the original Game of Thrones TV show: “The one goal that EVERYONE involved shares here is to make these new shows just as good as GAME OF THRONES itself. No easy task, mind you. David Benioff and Dan Weiss are a tough, tough act to follow, as all those Emmys demonstrate.”
• There are actually five projects in development, not four: “We had four scripts in development when I arrived in LA last week, but by the time I left we had five. We have added a fifth writer to the original four.”
• Martin has been very busy developing the shows with the writers. “Every one of the four has visited me here in Santa Fe, some of them more than once, and we’ve spent days together discussing their ideas, the history of Westeros and the world beyond, and sundry details found only in The World of Ice & Fire and The Lands of Ice & Fire […] They are all amazing talents, and I am excited to be working with them. In between visits, I’ve been in touch with them by phone, text, and email, and I expect there will be a lot more back-and-forth as we move forward.”
  
  
• Martin cautions that the goal of all five projects is to shoot a pilot, but he can’t guarantee that they’ll all be ordered to series. “How many pilots will be filmed, and how many series might come out of that, remains to be seen.”
• He doesn’t want to share what each project dives into, but he does confirm that Dunk & Egg will NOT be one of them. Why not? He’s still writing the series and doesn’t want HBO to surpass him, like they did on Game of Thrones. “When the day comes that I’ve finished telling all my tales of Dunk & Egg, then we’ll do a tv show about them… but that day is still a long ways off.”

  He also says that one of the shows won’t be about Robert’s Rebellion. “I know thousands of you want that, I know there’s a petition… but by the time I finish writing A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, you will know every important thing that happened in Robert’s Rebellion.”

Whew! Lots of good new info there. What do you think of HBO and GRRM’s plans for Game of Thrones spinoffs “successor shows”?