Toby Melville/Reuters
HBO has ordered a pilot episode for a Game of Thrones spinoff that would keep some of the hit show’s characters alive after the final season in 2019. In a statement late Friday, the network said the new series comes from author George R.R. Martin and British screenwriter and producer Jane Goldman. The spinoff, one of several Game of Thrones projects in the works, is set thousands of years before the days of the Iron Throne. If the show gets picked up, it will focus on “the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour,” the network said. “From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East, to the Starks of legend… it’s not the story we think we know,” the network teased of the series.