Will Martin's 'Wild Cards' Be as Big as 'Game of Thrones'?

George R.R. Martin's name is attached to the hottest thing on TV right now, but that thing - HBO's Game of Thrones - will come to an end in a little over a year. Will a recently announced new series with Martin on board be able to pick up where GoT leaves off after the conclusion of its eighth season?

Martin announced last week that Universal Cable Productions is developing a TV series version of Wild Cards, a fantasy anthology series that Martin has edited for three decades. The series consists of stories set in a post-apocalyptic universe populated by superheroes.

"Wild Cards is a series of books, graphic novels, games," Martin wrote on his blog over the weekend, "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. There are thousands of stories to be told in the world of the Wild Cards, and [producers] Gregory and Melinda and UPC hope to be able to tell many of them."

Martin himself is not the writer of the Wild Cards stories, and because he has an exclusive development deal with HBO, he will not be involved creatively with the Wild Cards TV series. The connection of his name to the series, however, is a marketing goldmine. Despite the total lack of similarity between the new series and Game of Thrones, the two series are easily linked through Martin, and the connection might draw GoT fans to the new superhero series, wherever it eventually airs.