Game of Thrones author may have another huge TV hit in the pipeline

Although we’ll have to bid farewell to Game of Thrones once the hit TV series comes to an end after season eight, it won’t be the last of author George RR Martin’s work that we see on TV.

Martin announced on his blog that Wild Cards, his series of novels and anthologies, has been picked up for production.

Don’t worry, it won’t distract Martin from penning The Winds of Winter, the next novel in the Game of Thrones saga. As he’s signed exclusively to HBO, he’s entrusted the adaptation of Wild Cards to his assistant editor Melinda M. Snodgrass, who’s worked with him on the series since the beginning.

The new show will be produced by Universal Cable Productions (UCP), which is behind major TV blockbusters like Mr. Robot, Suits and 12 Monkeys. Martin expects the show to arrive in “a year or two.”

The first Wild Cards novel was published in 1986, and 21 more of them – a number of which were penned by other authors including Snodgrass – with a brand new one slated for release this year. In the words of Martin himself:

Wild Cards is a series of books, graphic novels, games… but most of all it is a universe, as large and diverse and exciting as the comic book universes of Marvel and DC (though somewhat grittier, and considerably more realistic and more consistent), with an enormous cast of characters both major and minor.

The shared world of the Wild Cards diverged from our own on September 15, 1946 when an alien virus was released in the skies over Manhattan, and spread across an unsuspecting Earth. Of those infected, 90 percent died horribly, drawing the black queen, 9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1 percent became blessed with extraordinary and unpredictable powers and became aces. The world was never the same.

It already sounds fantastic. The only question is: will you read the existing novels before the show airs on TV? Let us know in the comments.