HBO gives second season to 'House of the Dragon' after premiere splash
Joaquin Ossorio-Castillo

HBO (NASDAQ:WBD) has given a second-season renewal to its Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, a reaction to a hit Sunday-night debut for the fantasy series.
That may have been a bit of a foregone conclusion as the network has been eager for heavy traction for a number of Thrones spin-offs, and was likely to invest more in House of the Dragon, barring a collapse.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) stock is up 2.4% Friday, among top Communication Services gainers.

In the streaming era, a number of second-season renewals are coming just after a series debut, once the company gets a look at how a premiere was received. Netflix (NFLX) commonly orders up new episodes after it gets a look at any strong data for a first episode.
Sunday made for an easier decision for HBO (WBD): House of the Dragon set a series premiere record for the network, with 10M viewers. That easily tops the roughly 2M viewers for the series premiere of Game of Thrones, which arguably became the biggest show on television by its eighth and final season.
With nearly a week having passed since the premiere, HBO says that near 20M viewers have seen the episode.
And it's a big deal for the Throneiverse: HBO has at least seven GoT spin-offs in the works, including four scripted programs, so the encouraging news means more dragon-based content may see the light of day.
HBO Max crashed for thousands of viewers Sunday (seemingly mainly on Amazon Fire TV devices) as the high-profile drama made its highly marketed launch.