Westeros

Thanks to Boiled Leather Audio Hour hosts Sean T. Collins and Stefan Stasse, Linda and I spend some time discussing our essay in Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Order: US, UK) which officially hit shelves on the 26th of June.

With filming to begin in little more than a week, the fact that actors have already been cast in a number of roles should not be a surprise. The fact that names are starting to spill, one after the other, is probably not too surprising. We’ve been sent quite a few details about a number of additional actors who’ve landed roles, some of whom will probably be familiar to anyone who watches film or television with any regularity…

Despite the fact that the production seems very shy of revealing casting news just yet, it’s not as if there hasn’t been some casting decisions made. In one case, we’ve waited several weeks in hopes that HBO would let up and provide confirmation… but as they won’t—and more power to them!—we’ll just go ahead and reveal what we know (or think we know) to date regarding one particular trio of castings on which we have details.

The San Diego Comic-con has been releasing its program details, and fairly full details regarding the Game of Thrones panel are now available:

So, now we have a list of “some” o the cast who’ll be appearing. Why “some”? I suspect some more may be added as they clarify schedules… and, given the extreme silence from HBO on casting to date, I think it’s safe to say that a “surprise” or two in terms of casting news will be revealed at the con.

HBO adds a follow-up indicating that executive producers Benioff and Weiss will not be in attendance as the season will already be filming at the time of the convention.

HBO’s press release confirming Morocco as a fourth shooting location (pretty sure that’s unprecedented for a regular hour-long series, though I suppose there may be some European television series or mini-series that have managed something similar) and no changes to the writing staff from last season also included the full list of directors involved in this new season, and there’s a mix of returning and new names that’s worth taking a closer look at.

Straight from HBO, we’ve details on the writers and directors for the next season of Game of Thrones, with filming due to begin the second week of July. It confirms our earlier reports on Morocco becoming a fourth(!) filming location.

Here’s the press release:

So, D&D will be directing an episode (or two?)... and Alik Sakharov is returning, which is excellent. Plus a female director, Michelle MacLaren, joins the mix. More details on the directors shortly!

Over at “Not a Blog”, George has posted a lengthy update on various projects, from those that are done (The Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection [Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK]) to those in-progress (such as The Winds of Winter, Dangerous Women and the fourth Dunk & Egg novella, the latest Wild Cards novel Lowball, and Old Mars), and on to those just in the planning stages (Old Venus).

One in particular might be of special interest to followers of Westeros.org, since it’s The World of Ice and Fire, the world book that we’re are co-authoring with George. Here’s what George has to say:

Speaking of that last stuff… yeah, there’s some really neat details in there, and perhaps a new mystery or two for fans to ponder. Some fans have long wondered just how Aegon’s Conquest was carried out, how the Vale of Arryn fell under their control, the status of Dorne in that time, even the order in which the Targaryens conquered each region… well, they’ll be wondering no more, on those topics, and quite a few others!

Over at George R.R. Martin’s Not a Blog, GRRM notes that he’s supporting a charity drive to support the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary—a non-profit organization that takes in and shelters abused or abandoned captive-bred wolves. To assist the sanctuary in its fund-raising efforts, Martin has donated 40 first edition hardcovers of A Dance with Dragons, which will come autographed and personally inscribed for the first 40 people to donate $100 or more to the charity. As he notes, the swelling attendance of his signing events has made personal inscriptions much less common than they once were.

Besides that, there’s also a chapbook available for those who donate $10, which he’ll sign (but not inscribe).

As George says, it’s all in a good cause, so please consider donating!

Over at Corona Coming Attractions, a multi-part round-table is being published concerning Game of Thrones in its second season. It’s quite lengthy (in part because, well, I’m one of those who are part of the round-table and you all know how verbose I am!), but I think there’s some good points raised by quite a few people.

Other participants include Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post, Amin Javadi from the Podcast of Ice and Fire, James Poniewozik from TIME, writer and Wired contributor David Barr Kirtley, author and editor Doug Cohen, and of course the host of the roundtable, writer Marc N. Kleinhenz.

Posting this later than originally intended, but Midsummer and Euro 2012 suggest that it’s in fact a fine time to share a rather long (and rambling, in some cases—future videos will try and be a bit more organized!) video discussing the Kingsguard knights in the reign of Aerys II Targaryen, also known as the Mad King. This and many other videos can be found at our Youtube channel!

Note that if you’ve not read the books, there are spoilers—namely concerning the third novel, A Storm of Swords, but also touching on A Dance with Dragons.

As we reported last week, we now know that director David Nutter is set to direct the final two episodes of season 3 with the help of cinematographer Robert McLachlan. The article in which this news was revealed indicated that Morocco was going to be a filming location for the third season. We cast some doubts on it, but couldn’t rule it out…

But now this lengthy piece about McLachlan and his involvement in the series goes a step further and provides us a direct quote:

So, there you go. Season 3 seems set to use Morocco for exterior locations, and perhaps some interiors as well, according to McLachlan. That’s almost certainly all for Daenerys’s storyline in that season and, presumably, the prospective season 4. As to no Iceland in those last two episodes, this tells us that they’ll be done using Iceland before that once things have shifted back to the area around the Wall.

Read the whole article while you’re at it, as it discusses the scope of the production and many other aspects of the film and television industry.

No, no, not any more of that Bush beheading business. This is much funnier: political attack ads from the Seven Kingdoms, courtesy of Mother Jones. Funny stuff!

We heard this news first awhile ago from Eastercon, but now Gollancz has sent out a press release describing their plan to republish the first three Wild Cards books in the UK, as well as the five “new generation” novels. Wild Cards is the longest-running shared world book, featuring more realistic, grounded depictions of heroes within a single continuity. It’s something of an alternate history of the world, if a virus that wiped out tens of thousands, left many thousands more as “jokers” with useless powers and/or terrible deformations, and left a few (a lucky few) with superhuman abilities right after the end of WWII. Wild Cards, the first novel, was recently re-released with a couple of new stories added in, and it’s definitely well worth the read.

Here’s the press release:

Via HBO, we’ve learned that there’ll be a Game of Thrones panel this year at San Diego Comic-Con International, just like last year… but unlike last year, it’ll be in the huge Hall H which has a capacity of some 6,500. As James Hibberd notes, Hall H has generally been reserved for big movies or huge TV shows (ala Lost), so the presence of Game of Thrones as one of three TV shows featured in Hall H this year (Fringe and The Big Bang Theory are the other two) shows that the organizers believe that the show has a great deal of interest (as it does). Even True Blood doesn’t get that level of interest from SDCC—it’s in the spacious-but-no-as-large Ballroom 20.

The panel is scheduled for July 13th, the second day of the convention. No details yet on who’ll be part of the panel, other than a remark from GRRM that he’s adjusting his schedule to be able to make an appearance at HBO’s request. We expect we’ll be hearing more details soon.

June 26th will see the release of Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: US, UK), a collection of essays from a wide range of writers (including Linda and I!) on all sorts of aspects of the series.

Some really great essays from Alyssa Rosenberg, Gary Westfahl, Jesse Scoble, Adam Whitehead, Myke Cole, and more, and there’s also a foreword from R.A. Salvatore.

The first couple of paragraphs from all the contributors essays are available at the official site for the book. If you want more of an excerpt, a free PDF excerpt will be made available if you sign up for the Smart Pop Newsletter via the above site. The editor, James Lowder, also has an read on >>