Subject says it all! This is earlier than I expected—after the initial first season of a show, it often seems like HBO prefers to wait out renewal news—but it’s pretty much exactly what I expected: a full on renewal for season 4.

Read the press release below:

James Hibberd has the scoop that the premiere episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones, “Valar Dohaeris”, is the most watched episode ever of the series. The initial 9PM showing pulled 4.4 million viewers, while with repeats the show reached 6.7 million viewers. That’s an increase of 13 percent over last year’s premiere. And that’s with the Easter holiday and the finale of AMC’s smash hit The Walking Dead scheduled at the same time. Hibberd notes that the 10PM reairing in particular had strong numbers for a repeat, and he suggests that’s because some viewers switched to the show after Dead was done.

By way of comparison, last year fellow HBO show True Blood scored 5.2 million viewers on the initial airing of their premiere… but just 6.3 million with repeats.

There are some excellent—and rather intriguing—shots in this new critic spot ahead of the premiere tonight:

Continuing our interview series, next up is actress Rose Leslie, who had a memorable turn as Ygritte last season.

In this interview, she gives some hints about things to come, discusses just how often Kit Harington smiles, and much more. I note one place where she laughs… but truth be told, she laughs often and was clearly enjoying herself immensely at being involved in a project like Game of Thrones.

Interview

What can you tell us about season 3?

Why is Ygritte interested in Jon Snow? What piques her interest?

Want more? Read the rest!

David Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language, has written an article for CNN revealing that the producers of Game of Thrones hired him to create two dialects of Valyrian, the ancient language of Valyria: High Valyrian and Low Valyrian. Though it’s light on specific details, it gives a great sense of the process of differentiating one version from another.

Having watched the first four episodes, we can say categorically that Peterson’s done a fantastic job. It sounds quite remarkable in the mouths of the actors who speak it at length.

Continuing our series of interviews, this time it’s Iain Glen on board. Playing Jorah Mormont, he may be rather (a lot) different from the character in the novels, but the dignity and gravity he brings to his performance is a terrific counter-point to Daenerys Targaryen’s youthful energy and determination. In the below interview, we touch on topics such as his luck in filming locations, his views on the violence in the show, and just how Jorah feels about Daenerys.

Interview

How is this season for Jorah and Dany this season?

Want the rest? Read the interview!

The nominees for the 2013 Hugo Awards are in the process of being announced. Last year, Game of Thrones won in the Dramatic Presentation - Long Form category… but perhaps not unexpectedly, this year it did not garner sufficient votes to end up in that category. Instead, it seems enough people nominated a specific episode—“Blackwater”—to win it a place in the Dramatic Presentation - Short Form category. This episode, written by George R.R. Martin himself, is widely considered a crowning achievement for the series to date.

Here’s the full list of nominees in the category, the winners of which wll be announced at Lonestar Con 3, this year’s World Science Fiction convention.

Last week, we received the first four episodes of season 3 of Game of Thrones to review, courtesy of HBO. While our individual episode reviews and coverage will be held until the corresponding episodes air, it has become something of a tradition to share our general impressions of those early episodes. We did it for the first season, and we did it for the second season, so it seemed only right to do it again. The process of discussing even vague impressions will probably reveal some semi-spoilers, so reading on isn’t going to be a good idea if you prefer to stay unspoiled!

But lets just give a general summing up first, and get into the nitty gritty after: these four episodes are on the whole quite good; not perfect, but they may well be the strongest first four episodes as a whole for the series to date (certainly, they’re stronger as a unit than last season’s first four, though none of them are as good as “What is Dead May Never Die”). Some of our biggest fears going into this season seem, so far, to be unfounded. But there are some issues, such as the fact that a number of the anticipated new characters are rather underwhelming when they finally hit the screen and that there are one or two (largely invented) storylines that don’t really feel like they’re gelling for us.  Still, each subsequent episode goes from strength to strength, each one better than the last. So why do we feel cautiously optimistic? We recall that last season, too, the third and fourth episodes impressed us the most and left us pretty excited about what was to come… and then the cracks started to show and real problems developed that led to some major disappointments. Four episodes in a show like this is not enough to really gauge how the rest of the season will be, especially in terms of how well they’ll translate what’s in the novels to the screen.

Want to read the rest? Read it here!

HBO has just released a long video, focusing on the wildlings on the show, including commentary from George R.R. Martin. Some glimpses of some of the new cast members, as well, such as Kristofer Hivju as Tormund:

HBO has created a brand new way for fans of Game of Thrones to immerse themselves in its world, by creating a family arms generator at Join the Realm. Given that the Citadel’s heraldry section was one of the only things the nascent Westeros.org had many, many years ago, we entirely approve of this approach. The family arms and words are a terrific aspect of the novels, and it’s only a shame that the show can’t (presumably for reasons of budget and ease of storytelling) really embrace it as fully. But HBO’s crack marketing team? No limits for them, Seven bless them!

So go ahead and join the realm!

BBC Magazine has a new piece out focused very much on Game of Thrones and the fans it inspires. As with most mainstream media takes on these things, it focuses a fair bit on the more extreme expressions of fandom, but on the whole it covers a wide range of fan expression pretty well. The only thing it really lacks is attention to the Internet fandom and social media part of things, which has been such a big component of the show’s “viral” success, we think.

We know interviews with cast and crew of HBO’s Game of Thrones are going out there fast and furious right now, but we’re going to dive in and add to the plentitude. Each day, from here on toward the premiere on March 31st, we’ll feature an interview with a different actor from Game of Thrones season 3. You’ll see interviews from old favorites like Iain Glen, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Kit Harington… and plenty of new faces, as well, whom we’ve never had the pleasure of interviewing before, such as Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner, Gwendoline Christie, and Rose Leslie.

To kick off the series, you can read the interview with Michelle Fairely that we’ve just posted. Some hints about what’s going on in season 3, some thoughts about some of her fellow actors and the process of working on the show, and more!

Check in tomorrow evening when we’ll post another interview. Haven’t quite decided who we’ll post just yet—so hard to choose.

We’re aleady running a contest to win tickets to the Stockholm premiere, thanks to the Swedish branch of HBO Nordic... but we’ve also gotten the opportunity to run a contest for the Danish fans out there, for a chance to win VIP tickets to the premiere of season 3 of Game of Thrones in Copenhagen. We’ve 10 VIP tickets to give out, and these tickets cover yourself plus a companion.

Here’s the details on the event:

Date: March 27th at 6 PM.
Location: Odd Fellow Palæet, Bredgade 28, 1260 Copenhagen.
The will be a night in the spirit of Game of Thrones with a true-to-size replica of the Iron Throne and a screening of the first episode of Game of Thrones season 3. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau will be present and will entertain the crowds. There will be drinks and food and many hundred GoT fans present.

As to how to enter? Just comment on this post, and we’ll randomly select winners in the next few days!

Yet another preview video, courtesy of HBO. Now there’s something of a surfeit of these, I must say—in particular, this one is mostly footage we’ve already seen. But, hey, for those who’ve missed the earlier ones…

Our screencapping backlog is getting longer and longer. Too much to do, too little time to do it in!

The webcast of the panel featuring cast and crew members from Game of Thrones—including George R.R. Martin—is set to begin at about 7:40 PM Pacific time. You can watch it embedded below:

For those who’ve asked, it certainly looks like this webcast will then join the “Webcasts on Demand” that the Emmys’ site offers. We don’t know if there’ll be a log of hours or days before this happens, however.