Would you want roles recast and if so, who? Myself:…yep it’s misogynistic, sorry, but I’d want Catelyn Tully recast yet I wouldn’t want the Baratheons and Starks recast. Except Benjen I guess since he was very young at the time of the usurpation. But it’s not a dealbreaker for me if they kept the same actress. Keep Baelish too. Dye his hair and cut his mustache and he’d look younger instantly.
The purpose: Two-fold. One it could be run in the ‘off-season’ or it could fill a season when the series catches up to the books. Also, it’d be cool to see all the old actors back.
The second purpose, and hook, would be (similar to BSG’s The Plan when they revealed how certain incidents happened) to show what really happened with Jon Snow’s parents. Rather than an offhand reveal in the regular series, it would be an important storyline in the prequels.
There’s the Dunk and Egg stories, but only one (or two…) GoT character is living then. Otherwise there’s Robert’s Rebellion (which looks like where you’re going, but Robert was less slovenly then, no?), Dance of Dragons, or Blackfyre Rebellion. I am interested how that last one will be mentioned, if at all. It would be interesting to do that with new actors to bridge S4 and S5, although my main reason would be to make the wait less long.
Lose some weight, cut his hair and that beard and you’d barely even recognize him. Sean Bean is the one who we’d just have to ‘deal with it’.
My proposal is from around the time the King goes mad to the resolution of Snow’s parentage. I wouldn’t show Ned entering Winterfell with Baby Jon. That’s a depressing conclusion.
LurkingHorror’s idea sounds more like an anthology series, which has it’s advantages. It would be easier to get principle actors if they aren’t committed to an entire series.
Another idea is to run the series from The King going mad right up to Jon Arryn being killed (including the Greyjoy Rebellion). That’s not a proper conclusion though. There might have to be an accompanying unwritten storyline to keep us hooked. Kind of like in BSG: Razor.
I’d kind of like to see a prequel leading up from Dunk and Egg all the way to where GOT began. Out of all the unanswered questions though, I’m most curious about Jon Snow’s parentage.
Speaking or prequels, I just read that there’s a new GoT prequel book, The World of Ice and Fire, scheduled for release on 10/26/14. I can hardly wait.
Maester Aemon, Brynden Rivers, and a very young Walder Frey mentioned in The Mystery Knight
Dunk and Egg are only three novellas though:
The Hedge Knight
The Sworn Sword
The Mystery Knight
But there is a lot of good stuff if you start at the beginning of the Blackfyre Rebellion (as you mentioned) and move into Dunk and Egg - or start with Dunk and Egg and do extensive flashbacks of the Blackfyre Rebellion.
I think there is more than a season’s worth if you Dunk and Egg’ed with Blackfyre (I mean you’d have to extensively go into it to explain the world that Dunk and Egg live in.
