EW’s Spoiler Room provides some new information regarding season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, thanks to Alfie Allen, who plays Theon GreyjoyTheon Greyjoy. Getting a chance to chat with him at the SAG Awards, this is what he had to say about what he got to do, who he loved working with, and what his favorite episode is. Mild spoilers, if you really don’t want to know anything about the story lines or new characters for season 2!

To quote:

HBO has partnered with social TV app creator Miso for the Game of Thrones Superfan Sideshow Challenge, inviting fans of the TV series to view, vote on, and even create Sideshows, a “second screen” experience which allows fellow fans to watch an episode of the series while viewing the Miso for iPhone app to see interesting facts, notable quotes, and polls that get fans to become more engaged in what they’re watching. The top producers of Sideshows—according to votes through the app or

HBO got in touch with Linda and I, asking us for Westeros.org to help launch the availability of Game of Thrones Sideshows by providing one for episode 2, “The Kingsroad”, which we were all too glad to do. It was an interesting experience, and we hope the fans of the series find some of the details we point out interesting or amusing!

Big news for fans of replica memorabilia has just come down the pipeline: Valyrian Steel, producers of officially licensed weapons based on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, have nowannounced that they have secured the rights to produce weapons and armor based on HBO’s hit Game of Thrones series. The first items they plan to produce?

Best of all, Valyrian Steel means to continue to producing replicas based on the novels at the same time. They have a Night’s Watch Survival Kit in the pipeline, each one featuring a unique, hand-made obsidian dagger, and King Robert’s Warhammer is on the way to join Longclaw, Needle, and Ice. All the weapons made under the “A Song of Ice and Fire” license are done with the direct input of GRRM, unlike the Game of Thrones replicas.

The Huffington Post’s television critic Maureen Ryan runs an annual auction for charity called “Swag for Charity”, with items covering the range of swag she gets from studios and networks in her role as a critic. This year, GRRM contacted Mo and offered to throw in a number of signed books to the cause, so there’s an excellent chance to fans of his work to get their hands on a complete signed hardcover set of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, an amazing collection, the start of a superhero saga that’s lasted decades, and much more (including some Spartacus: Vengeance items).

Bid early, bid often, because all proceeds goes to deserving charities, including Partners in Health! The auction on the George R.R. Martin items ends on Sunday.

A new month, and now a new teaser from Atlus for XBox 360, PS3; PC forthcoming). This one features one of the new locations created for the game, Riverspring, the seat of House Sarwyck. One of the two playable characters from the game, the red priest Alester, hails from there.

The teaser certainly seems to be suggesting that political intrigues and currents are going to be an important part of the game’s narrative. More information about the RPG can be found at the official site, and in our earlier report.

That’s what Kit Harington teased to MTV’s Kara Warner at the SAG red carpet.  You can watch the video (US only) of the discussion below:

A write-up of the interview can be found at MTV’s site, for those who can’t see the video.

Thanks to Cunningham’s hint followed by Jolie Lash’s prompting, we now know what Cunningham was doing yesterday—getting interviewed by Access Hollywood about his role as Ser Davos Seaworth! In fact, there’s an excellent video interview with the actor (who’s awfully charming, if I may say so) as well, which covers the same material

Hopefully no one will seriously take issue with their changing the hand from which Davos’s is lacking a few joints!

(UPDATE:

James Hibberd at EW seems to have been thinking along the same lines, and has learned from a network representative that they’ve never had a piece of online promotional content generate so many hits (now standing at some 3.5 million) in so short a time. Amazing.)

The eager fans of HBO’s hit series who flocked to the “Shadows” teaser is quite amazing. A day and a half since it premiered, and Youtube presently reports that it’s been viewed no less than 2,296,806 times. That’s… well, a lot! The intensity of anticipation among fans of the series is growing as we’re about two hit just two months away from the premiere on April 1st (April 2nd in the UK and Central Europe).

In fact, the numbers suggest that the show has been steadily climbing all around, not just in the perception of the fandom on the internet.

We had an inkling of this awhile back, but now it’s official: an enhanced e-book of A Game of Thrones has come out from the UK’s Harper Collins Voyager, containing some really cool features that add to the experience such as a glossary of characters, a dynamic map tracking characters’ movements from chapter to chapter (note: the web-accessible version seems buggy, but one assumes it’s working just fine in the app), and exclusive audio clips from the audio book read by Roy Dotrice (who received a Guiness Book of World Records entry for most voices by an individual in a single audio book).

The e-book is an iOS exclusive, at least at this time, and is sold only from the UK bookstore.

Here’s the full details:

Although the ensemble cast of Game of Thrones struck out for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Dramatic Series”—losing to sibling Boardwalk Empire, who had taken the award last year—it was not all for naught for the show. Earlier in the day, it was announced on the red carpet that the show took the award for “Outstanding Perfomance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series”, which is certainly well-deserved when you consider how many stunts went into the series. Congratulations all around to the stunt team! Full results can be found at the Screen Actors Guild Awards page.

The nice thing about the ensemble being nominated, it must be said, is the fact that so many of the actors—especially the younger actors—turned up at the award ceremony. Here’s a recap of who was there:

• Kit Harrington was there, and was even featured in a red carpet interview.
• Emilia Clarke looked lovely in a Chanel dress from the Fall 2012 collection. There’s even a poll about the look and what fans thought of it.
• Alfie Allen looked relaxed with his open collar.
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was on hand, too!
• Jason Momoa and wife Lisa Bonet were there as well, and were glimpsed on camera… but it doesn’t look as if they managed a red carpet photo. From what we’ve read from one of HBO’s publicity people, the photo line was quite horrendous and many actors chose to skip it.

That video had a lot of new images, didn’t it? Some excellent material for consideration and discussion, and to help that along, we’ve posted screencaps to our Previews gallery, beginning with this first look at Dragonstone. It goes on for 45 more images, giving us added looks at Brienne of Tarth, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, and even Pyat Pree. There’s one image I failed to capture, of Catelyn, but we’ll be adding that tomorrow. Today… well, it’s 5 AM and bed is calling. Enjoy!

And here it is!

Screen caps can be found here, beginning with this image at Dragonstone.

Over at “Not a Blog”, GRRM has been making recommendations for this year’s Hugo Awards—the oldest and most well-known award for science fiction and fantasy—in various categories. His own work, A Dance with Dragons, is eligible for the Best Novel category, and of course Game of Thrones is eligible in the Dramatic Presentation, Short Form category… but, intriguingly, it’s also eligible for the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category. There’s some interesting discussion on that topic in comments.

The take out? I’d say fans of the show who nominate should all nominate it in the Long Form category, and maybe not vote for it at all in Short Form (a category which will, with 99.99% certainty, be won by the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife”, written by Neil Gaiman) so that the administrators have an easy choice to make as to category. It worked back in 2008 when fans nominated Heroes in Long Form and almost no votes were thrown in for Short Form. That’s what we intend to do, in any case, having gotten a supporting membership of our own.

All members of last year’s Worldcon, and current members of this year’s Worldcon at Chicon in Chicago provided they get their membership—any membership, even the $50 Supporting membership, which has a number of perks such as receiving e-books of all the finalist novels - on or before January 31st), can nominate. And you should do. And if you can actually attend the event, even better—five days of SF/F/H goodness, academic tracks and film tracks, parties and meeting many of the luminaries of the genre past, present, and future, parties, art dealers and memorabilia and books upon books, parties…

Did I mention the parties? The Brotherhood without Banner will be making a strong showing, and their parties are famous. And of course, George will be there, and as he always says, a con’s the absolute best setting to see him, not just at signings and readings, but also on panels and, yes, in the party rooms.

While you’re counting the hours and minutes to Sunday evening’s premiere of a new trailer with fresh footage from the upcoming season 2, The Hollywood Reporter takes us back to Season 1 with this long, 5 minute behind-the-scenes footage from HBO’s forthcoming DVD (US, UK) and Bluray (US, UK) box sets. This video features Emilia Clarke as Daenerys, as well as director Daniel Minahan and executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, as they discuss the infamous heart-eating scene:

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

Mark your calendars, folks. And for those who are True Blood fans, HBO also says there’ll be a “short graphic tease” for season 5 of that show at 8:58 PM.

Over at his “Not a Blog”, GRRM has posted details of a book sale he’s holding through to the Super Bowl, in honor of his beloved New York Giants making an appearance there.

In brief:

• $10 off hardcovers
• $20 off limited editions

And to quote instructions:

As always, GRRM’s happy to personalize inscriptions on books sold through his official website. (At a guess, that GO GIANTS requirement may make this a non-starter for Pats fans…)

Ian Ruhfass, a lead 3D Artist at A52/Elastic, popped over to Reddit to share the fact that he’s worked on the Emmy-winning title sequence, and that he’s been working on the title sequence for season 2. He’s coy with details, but yes, there’ll be some new locations featured in the title this season… and one of them sure sounds like it’ll be Harrenhal, which is to be expected.

He goes on to discuss his work more generally, and offers some good advice for budding 3D artists. Well worth checking out.

Via Czech fan site Ice & Fire, it seems that HBO Central Europe has confirmed that they’re repeating what they did last year: the second season of Game of Thrones will air the day after it premieres in the United States, meaning April 2nd for a broad swath of Central Europe. They join Sky Atlantic as being offer next-day airing of the show, eased in great part by being part of the HBO corporate umbrella. Whether any other broadcasters or cable companies will be able to provide the same service in Europe remains to be seen.

Thanks to Indigo Books, we’ve learned that George R.R. Martin will be speaking and signing books at the Indigo store at 55 Bloor Street West, at 7 PM on March 13th. Great opportunity for Canadian fans to meet GRRM. This appearance hasn’t apparently made it onto his Appearances page just yet, so it must have been recently finalized.

And we’ll just mention that his official page is a great way to see where he’ll be in coming months. Trips planned for this year include London in April for Eastercon, as well as such varied places as Portugal, Montana, Seattle, and Spain.

Subtext, makers of the iPad free social reading app of the same name, have launched a completely overhauled version of their application. The UI is sleeker and more informative, a brand new book search tool has been set, and more.

Last summer, Subtext invited me to be one of three “experts”—joined by series editor Anne Groell (who’s also our editor on The World of Ice and Fire)  and Sean T. Collins of Boiled Leather)—to add notes to A Game of Thrones. It was a fun, interesting project, and we amassed something north of 1,000 notes covering the sublime (Sean’s entries are particularly thought-provoking) to the amusing (Anne has some good stories about the behind-the-scenes) to the trivial (well, that’d be my entries, filled with little facts and heraldry and quotes direct from GRRM). The feedback has been quite positive, I’ve been told.

A growing range of books are supported by the app, so that readers, experts, and writers can comment on and communicate with one another about the books they’re reading. It’s a fantastic way to bring books even further into the 21st century, by making them social. Want to argue why a character made a bad choice on page 633? Want to respond to an editor’s funny story about how the author worked his way to writing a particular scene as she did? Want to take argue with someone else’s gloss of the text? You can do all of that with the Subtext app. Or how about embed videos or images that you associate with particular characters, scenes, or events? You can do that, as well.

Books can be imported from various sources, or bought through the Google Books store, and there are nice, clear instructions for how to do it in the app. I believe an Android version is in development, so for now it’s just for iPad, and available only via the siTunes US store. If youv’e an iPad, I really recommend checking it out—I believe there’s a few 50 page previews, with the notes, so you can see what each book they have has to offer.

Kotaku, the gaming-focused site that’s part of the Gawker Media empire, has an excellent write-up for A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Amazon: US, UK) from Fantasy Flight Games.

As the review indicates, it really is a fantastic game—runs a bit long and works best with a full complement of players, and the rules take some learning, but once you have it down, it’s extremely good. So good, that it’s just shy of the top 100 at BoardGameGeek, which ranks something like 5,000 board games. The new 2nd edition is said to be particularly good, bringing in rules from past expansions and marrying them to beautiful art and graphic design. If you’re a fan of deep, strategic board games, the Game of Thrones board game is a terrific choice.

This is almost the most we’ve heard from any of the new cast members, and it’s certainly interesting. In this interview with Blackfilm, actor Nonso Anozie—cast in the role of Xaro Xhoan Daxos—spills some details about his role, his familiarity with the books, and his experience working on the show

Thanks to HBO getting the Art Direction video up on Youtube the day after it was released on HBO.com, we have screenshots of notable bits, with commentary on details.

Featuring the most extensive glimpses we’ve had of Qarth and Harrenhal to date, the screenshots begin here, with what’s also the most spoilery image in the whole thing. Tread carefully!

Thanks to Blastr for bringing this IGN interview with Steve DeKnight, executive producer and writer of Starz’s Spartacus series, we learn that the writing staff of Spartacus are all big fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones while he explains why a certain storyline they had planned for the new season fell by the way side:

Another day, another guild award nomination! This time, according to Deadline Hollywood, the Costumer Designers Guild has announced its nominees, and Game of Thrones‘s Michele Clapton is included in the Outstanding Period/Fantasy Television category. We suspect there’ll be stiff competition from Showtime’s The Borgias (costumes by Gabriella Pescucci) and fellow HBO show Boardwalk Empire (John A. Dunn, Lisa Padovani), to say the least.

HBO’s gone ahead and released another video, first via the HBO app for iOS and Android, and that so shortly after the Croatia video hit the air. This one, focused on art direction, gives us some of our best looks at sets such as Harrenhal, Qarth, and Craster’s Keep. There’s a couple of seconds of kind of spoilerish material, as well, so if you haven’t read A Clash of Kings, you may not want to watch.

Screencaps and the usual commentary when the video hits the official Game of Thrones channel and we can get a hold of 720p images.

Valyrian Steel has announced that pre-ordering of the Night’s Watch Dragonglass Dagger Set—also known as the “Beyond the Wall Survival Kit”—will begin from this Saturday.

This is one of the coolest things they’ve done in their line of officially-licensed “A Song of Ice and Fire” replicas—including Longclaw, Needle, and Ice, as well as the forthcoming King Robert’s Hammer (also available for pre-order)—and features a real obsidian blade crafted by hand (no two weapons will be exactly alike!), a belt pouch, five obsidian arrowheads, a sheath, and a collectible wooden storage box.

Bear in mind that there may be some restrictions depending on where you live, so read the details carefully at their site.

The David Gemmell Legend Award is a U.K.-based award for fantasy, divided into several categories according to the sub-genre. Presently, the Legend Award has opened up its polls to determine the short lists, and in the Legend category for Best Fantasy Novel of 2011?

You guessed it: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, along with many other books besides. The polls close on March 31st, and then voting will open to determine the final winners in each of three categories. To vote, visit the poll (and make sure to check the radio button above the title you want to support).

Some new photos from the filming in Iceland in November and December have turned up, courtesy of the Location Guide—a site specializing in covering and promoting foreign locations for film and television purposes—and Pegaus Productions, the local production company that faciliated the filming.

Among the notable production details: 200 crew and 15 horses, minimal need for building anything, and snowfall was needed to minimize costs (a lack of snow would have meant they’d have to film on the glacier itself, which would take longer and be more expensive, and would also have revealed ash from a recent volcanic eruption).

We should note that at least one of the images is potentially a spoiler if you’ve not read A Clash of Kings, so if you don’t want to be spoiled… well, don’t look!

In their round-up of their plans for 2012, roleplaying game publisher Green Ronin spend a good deal of time discussing their Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying game. The huge boom in interest in all things Ice and Fire thanks to HBO’s Game of Thrones has seriously depleted their stock of the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying rule book. Instead of reprinting it, they’re announcing a brand new edition, called the A Game of Thrones edition, which will include the entirety of the Peril of King’s Landing adventure that was separately released.

Besides being full color, the RPG will feature a brand new cover from the amazing Michael Komarck, whose provided some of the finest artwork for “A Song of Ice and Fire” to date. Green Ronin’s plans extend past that May release of the AGoT edition, however.