Zack Sharf George R.R. Martin wrote in an Oct. 11 blog post that “House of the Dragon” will need to run a total of 40 episodes if it wants to fully tell the story of the Targaryen civil war, commonly referred to as the Dance of Dragons. The first season of the HBO prequel series runs 10 episodes, so Martin is envisioning a four-season run for the show. HBO has already greenlit a second season of “House of the Dragon.” “When I was a boy, shows had 39 episodes a season,” Martin wrote. “By the time I was writing for ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ it was down to 22. Cable shrunk that even further. ‘The Sopranos’ had 13 episodes per season, but just a few years later, ‘Game of Thrones’ had only 10 (and not even that, those last two seasons). If ‘House of the Dragon’ had 13 episodes per season, maybe we could have shown all the things we had to ‘time jump’ over…though that would have risked having some viewers complain that the show was too ‘slow,’ that ‘nothing happened.'”