Westeros

HBO has just revealed that they have cast the two leads for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, known to fans world wide as Dunk and Egg. Peter Claffey, an Irish rugby player-turned-ctor, will be Ser Duncan the Tall. Dexter Sol Ansell has in turn been cast as Dunk’s squire Egg; Ansell’s been acting since the age of 4, and most recently appeared as the young Coriolanus in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to begin filming in Northern Ireland, the old stomping grounds of Game of Thrones, in June with production likely to last several months.

On top of the two trailers to announce the June 16th premiere of House of the Dragon, HBO has also released some new images featuring characters (and one dragon). You can see them below!

Not just one but two trailers have dropped. A Black Trailer and a Green Trailer, further doubling own on the sides in the conflict.

It sounds like Thursday is likely to see a new trailer or teaser for the forthcoming second season of House of the Dragon, according to the latest post from the official sites. Two tweets promise that everyone must choose between “Team Green” and “Team Black”, and each tweet features dramatic images of some of the leading members of each party… plus our first look, I believe, at King Aegon II’s golden dragon (on green rather than the book canon black) that also answers one of the enduring heraldic questions of the show.

More on that below, but here’s the tweets:

ALL MUST CHOOSE. This promotional banner features the Greens and the Blacks, represented by Aegon, Ser Criston Cole, Aemond, and Alicent on the one side, and Rhaenyra, Daemon, Rhaenys, as well as Corlys Velaryon on the other.

Just a little over half a day left on CMON‘s crowd fundraising campaign for their next ASoIaF-based game, A Song of Ice and Fire: Tactics. Made to the same scale as their miniatures games (with thanks to Dark Sword Miniatures, who hold the license for all miniatures), this tactics-based game has already very much cleared its fundraising goal, with over 5500 backers raising $1.6 million (and counting). There’s some pretty impressive miniatures on display, in particular an enormous Drogon miniature that is a crowndfunding exclusive.

Here’s a trailer for the game from CMON:

Below, you’ll find the press release for the game with additional information!

Thanks to publishing news site Edelweiss, we’ve learned the full list of featured locations in the upcoming A Song of Ice and Fire 2025 Calendar, which we previously reported on back in December when the cover art, featuring Starfall, was revealed. All the illustrations are by artist Eddie Mendoza, whose work has previously graced The Rise of the Dragon.

Here’s the list of all 13 featured locations, continuing the tradition of twelve images for the months and a bonus two-page spread:

• Moat Cailin
• Dragonstone
• the Inn at the Crossroads
• the Nightfort
• the Bridge of Skulls

Interesting news broke last night that HBO is gearing up to explore the extensive history of Westeros with a new spinoff series centered around Aegon’s Conquest. According to a report from James Hibberd and Borys Kit for The Hollywood Reporter, the network has enlisted much-in-demand writer Mattson Tomlin to develop the project.

Last year, we noted news out of Variety that HBO had starting looking into bringing Aegon’s Conquest to the small screen (and, perhaps, even the big screen—a theatrical lead-in was under discussion) and actively sought a writer to head the development of this thrilling prequel series. That search seems to have ended.

The burning of Harrenhal during Aegon’s Conquest, as depicted by artist Marc Simonetti for the 2023 World of Fire and Blood Calendar

A press release from the WB Shop brought to our attention that HBO is releasing some new House of the Dragon merchandise for this year, taking inspiration from the forthcoming Lunar New Year on February 10th to dub this the “Year of the Dragon”. As you’d expect, there’s a strong dragon-focus.

We’ll point out some of the items they make a point of, after this pretty cool banner featuring Caraxes

At this year’s Primetime Creative Arts Emmys, House of the Dragon entered the show with a total of eight nominations in the category (plus a final, yet-to-be-determined, nomination in the regular Emmys for Outstanding Drama). Unfortunately, other shows—particularly HBO sibling The Last of Us—snatched away most of the prizes, but in one category the show proved victorious: Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-fi Costumes! Leading the names credited with the victory was season 1 costume designer Jany Temime, who posted about it on her Instagram:

The Primetime Emmys will air next Sunday.

Via the ever-watchful Redanian Intelligence, we learn that HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight has been pushed from a Spring to Summer 2024 production start. We reported back in October on a suspicious casting call that certainly seemed to fit the bill for casting of Dunk and Egg, and the update from RA seems to certainly confirm this as the same casting director, Lucy Bevan, is listed in the update in Production Monthly:

It’s great to see that Northern Ireland will once again host filming of matter from the Game of Thrones universe, as there are many hundreds of talented Northern Irish actors, extras, production, and craftspeople who helped bring Game of Thrones to life who’ll surely do the same for this show. Northern Ireland also has a wealth of possible filming locations.

Ser Duncan the Tall and his diminutive squire, Egg, by Gary Gianni.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has written about having watched Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, a Western animated story of revenge set in Edo Japan. We ourselves suggested fans should check it out shortly after its release when he binged it (over three days, as well, just like GRRM and Parris), suggesting that its adult nature, its bloody action, and its plotting would appeal to fans of A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones:

So, a good call from George. But he goes on past praising Blue Eye Samurai to discuss the state of possible animated successors to Game of Thrones... including the big news that the formerly-live Nine Voyages is being retooled as a possible animated series.

Details of the A Song of Ice and Fire 2025 Calendar have been released via Edelweiss and Amazon, and now we see that what seems to be one of the images—the cover image for the calendar—has also been released. Illustrated by concept artist and illustrator Eddie Mendoza, who first entered the Ice and Fire-art world with work he did on our own The Rise of the Dragon, next year’s edition of the calendar will focus on landscapes and castles from throughout the vast World of Ice and Fire, as described in the following text:

And the cover appears to be one of these locations, one which has never really been depicted before in the “official” art (outside of a rendition or two in the Fantasy Flight Games Game of Thrones card game): Starfall, the ancient and storied seat of House Dayne. (Yes!)

Last week, George posted an update to Not a Blog recounting a trip he took to the UK in late October and early November, in which he refers to meetings with his UK publishers concerning both A Song of Ice and Fire and Wild Cards, and then added some details regarding the play currently called The Iron Throne (it’s a working title):

The play was first announced way back in March of 2021. Dominic and Duncan would be Dominic Macmillan, the play’s director, and Duncan Cooke, the playwright.

And then George wrote a bit about his days working with Ryan Condal and the writers of House of the Dragon....

George R.R. Martin and House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal on the set of the TV show, in what may be the godswood of Harrenhal.

Towards the end of November, a very interesting post on /r/asoiaf Reddit from a moderator and superfan known as zionius_, revealing three pages that appear to be hand-written notes from George R.R. Martin sketching out plans for A Feast for Crows circa 2003-2004. George’s handwriting is not, perhaps, the easiest, so go to the original post for the transcription from zionius_ and members of the subreddit’s mod team, which does a good job of distilling what they found.

Though some questioned whether these were legitimate, we can say with 100% certainty that they are—George’s hand is unmistakable, and in any case the notes came from be shared by way of Arnold Cha, a serious ASoIaF collector who indicated that he got them from an unimpeachable source in the Santa Fe writing/arts scene. With Arnold’s permission, we’re including the images here, but again, go to the subreddit thread for the transcript!

A month ago, it was revealed that press had been given a screening of a season 2 teaser. We speculated then that it would be something fans would get to look at within a month… and as it happens, to the very day of our post, the season 2 teaser has been released by HBO. See it below!

Besides this, yesterday HBO released a pair of new character posters featuring Rhaenyra and Alicent… and now today they’ve released quite a few stills or on-set photographs from the new season, to whet the appetites of fans. See those below!