The book series Wild Cards, which is edited by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, is reportedly being developed into multiple TV shows by Hulu. The news comes as another series based on Martin's work, Nightflyers, is set to debut on SYFY. Of course, Game of Thrones itself is heading into its final season on HBO, with a premiere date set for April 2019. HBO is also set to follow up GoT with a prequel series set thousands of years before the events of the original.

Though Martin is surely best-known for writing A Song of Ice and Fire, the books that inspired GoT, the author has had his hand in a lot of other literary projects as well. One of those endeavors, the Martin-edited Wild Cards, is a series of shared universe anthologies that first began publishing in 1987. As of 2018, a total of 27 books have been published in the series with 40 different authors contributing, and there have been multiple graphic novel, comic book and board game adaptations as well.

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Now, Martin's clout as a developer of television will help bring Wild Cards to the small screen. Variety reports that Hulu has opened a writer's room to develop a pair of series based on the universe introduced in the books. Martin is set to executive produce the shows, together with his Wild Cards co-editor Melissa Snodgrass. Andrew Miller, who was most recently attached to the now-defunct Tremors series, will write and also executive produce the shows for Universal Television Productions and Hulu.

Set on a post-WW2 alternate Earth, the Wild Card books deal with the aftermath of an alien virus that was unleashed in 1946 and infected a large part of the population. The survivors of the alien plague ended up with scrambled DNA that resulted in grotesque deformities, except in the case of a small number of people who were left with super-human powers. The so-called "Wild Card" virus gets its name because it remains latent in those who carry it, until suddenly activated by a traumatic event, at which time the sufferer either dies, becomes a hideous mutant or turns into a superhero. In a scenario that nods at the X-Men, the story deals with Wild Card victims as they face backlash from society at large.

With 27 books to draw from, and a rich universe already established via those books plus graphic novels and games, the creative team behind the Wild Cards series should have no trouble coming up with material. Of course, it never hurts to have the George R.R. Martin name attached to your series either. That being said, Martin's TV universe thus far has not grown much beyond Game of Thrones, and it's not yet been proven that the other works he's written or otherwise been involved with will establish themselves the same way GoT has. Meanwhile, Martin continues toiling away on the next chapter in A Song of Ice and Fire, but admits that he's been struggling with getting the massive story together.

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Source: Variety