Westeros

An article focusing on Sky’s upcoming plans provides a tidbit of information which I believe narrows down when Game of Thrones is likely to premiere on Sky Atlantic (which begins to air tomorrow, February 1st, and will be free to all Sky customers through August). This paragraph seems to be a giveaway:

If that holds, and Sky doesn’t run any special “preview” airings of the premiere closer to the U.S. air date, I’ll go out on a limb and predict April 23rd as the launch of the series on Sky Atlantic. April 30th is the only other Saturday in April that’s available, but with almost two weeks between it and the U.S. premiere, it seems to us that Sky will recognize that for the error that it is. Of course, there are fans who’ll be hoping for an airing on the Monday following the U.S. airing, much as HBO Central Europe seems to be getting, and so this may be disappointing. Still, it’s only speculative right now, as Sky Atlantic has not confirmed an air date for the series as of yet.

Game of Thrones has just gotten something of a stamp of approval (or at least of very positive anticipation) from the L.A. Times in its Hero Complex pop culture blog, as blogger Amy Ratcliffe gives five reasons why HBO’s new series may be a big success. Some excellent points in there, although in the comments I did suggest one of them could use a little clarification.

Five reasons is all well-and-good, but we imagine we could come up with a few more. What would you suggest, if we wanted to make a list with ten reasons?

Over at the Cheese Magnet blog, John Jos. Miller—writer and fellow Wild Cards-collaborator with George R.R. Martin and the rest of the Consortium—has an fun post discussing sexed-up, vintage pulp magazine covers. Of interest to fans of GRRM is that at the end he offers up a chance to win a first edition copy of Inside Straight, the first of the newest Wild Cards trilogy, signed by at least several of the participants, for the first person to identify which of three men is him in a personal photo in 1974. He promises a chance at a consolation prize for one of the runner-ups.

Inside Straight contains stories from a number of authors, including GRRM, Carrie Vaughn, Daniel Abraham, Melinda Snodgrass, Caroline Spector, and more.

David J. Peterson continues the Dothraki lessons over at Game of Thrones, providing some insight into the Dothraki culture while he’s doing it. An additional PDF download is included at the end, providing an excellent beginner’s overview of the vocabulary and grammar covered so far. We look forward to it being expanded over time! Until then, the unofficial Dothraki fansite is a good repository of what’s known so far.

Here’s a quick round-up of some items from the last few days that we thinks fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones might find of interest. We’ve tweeted them, but haven’t yet had an opportunity to post them up:

Wrapping up, we think, MTV’s initial spate of interview videos from TCA is a brief interview piece with Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. The interviewer, fellow ASoIaF-fan Kara Warner, tells us there’ll be much more to come when we come nearer to the April 17th premiere date. Until then, enjoy the interview as David and Dan explain how they would describe the show to people who might be turned off by the fantasy label:

Thanks to a tweet from Sainou, a talent agency, we’ve discovered that the role of Lord Bracken in Game of Thrones was played by Gerry O’Brien, an Irish actor with quite a few credits to his name. He lists Alan Taylor as the director of his episode(s), and we know from Bryan Cogman that Taylor directed the ninth and tenth episodes.

Following our previous report on Voyager‘s plans to re-release the “A Song of Ice and Fire” e-books, A Game of Thrones has been released for Kindle in the U.K. in a thoroughly-proofed and newly reset edition. Via Twitter, Voyager has reported that A Clash of Kings is due February 3rd, A Storm of Swords late in February, and A Feast for Crows in March.

Also via Twitter, their plans are to release the e-book of A Dance with Dragons simultaneously with its hardcover publication.

This is a fun one from TCA, as the opening of the interview begins with some geeky discussion as to whether Westeros really counts as a single kingdom, and whether there’s actually seven or eight kingdoms within it. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss reiterate that a chief reason for producing the show “the HBO way” is that it allows them to be very faithful to the source material. They recognize they won’t make 100% of the fans happy, but they’re confident most of them will be:

(The answer to the question, by the by, is that Westeros is one kingdom, made up of the seven former kingdoms which existed at the time of Aegon’s conquest. We assume the reference to eight refers to the Iron Islands, but at the time of the Conquest the kingdom of the Iron Isles and the Trident was unified.)

Thanks to mediawill for the pointer!

First off, a pleasant surprise today was seeing Adam Serwer of The American Prospect, a leading liberal editorial magazine in the United States, sharing a blog post enthusing about A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones. Serwer touches on the aspects of the series that most appeal to him, particularly the moral ambiguities in the characters and conflicts in the setting as compared to that ur-text of epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings.

Combined with Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog posts for The Atlantic about the series, and Pat W. Caldwell’s tweet about Serwer’s piece, is Game of Thrones appealing enough to wonks and pundits to become a cultural artefact worth using as a wobbly jumping-off point for thoughtful political commentary? I’ll believe it once Matthew Yglesias starting talking about it. (I would have said Brad DeLong, but he’s already read the series!)

Also, as promised yesterday, MTV has released another video interview, this one with George R.R. Martin himself, as he discusses his approach to writing A Song of Ice and Fire:

More TCA-recorded goodness from MTV, as they now share their interview with Peter Dinklage. He seems to be one of those actors a bit hesitant about calling the series fantasy, and to be fair, his part of the story is mostly without any fantastical elements to it. And compared to Narnia (in which he acted in Prince Caspian), it’s practically mundane:

Two little tidbits of information have come our way via Bantam, the U.S. publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire, that we thought we’d share:

• Recently, rumor claimed that the audio books of the series were going to be recalled and replaced with new editions voiced by at least some of the actors from the series, with additional sound effects and music. However, this is untrue. What Bantam is doing is preparing to release the A Game of Thrones audio book with the new HBO art when ready (we’ve reported on the plans previously). There are no plans whatsoever to re-record, introduce sound effects, and so on at this time.
• The DelRaySpectra official twitter mentioned that they’re now labelling redone maps, plus they’ve ordered up a brand new one (which we speculate is the Free Cities map GRRM has previously mentioned.) We’re not going to read tea leaves over what this particular activity might or might not mean regarding the delayed A Dance with Dragons, but we should note that DelRaySpectra’s response refers to Tear’s map as apparently being an impetuous for Bantam commissioning redone maps.

We’re guessing this is from the TCA winter press tour, as no date is provided. After Elton, a pop culture site with a focus on topics of interest to gay men, has comments from executive producer D.B. Weiss and creator George R.R. Martin concerning the sexuality of characters in Game of Thrones. Read the extended text for possible spoilers.

MTV has shared its latest interview segment during the TCA Winter press tour, following their Emilia Clarke interview. This time, Sean Bean discusses the series, including his propensity for medieval-fantasy work. Notably, he seems to imply that he wasn’t initially very interested until he researched the series and discovered how well-regarded and popular it was, and then executive producer David Benioff (who had written Troy, in which Bean had played Odysseys) spoke with him to convince him the rest of the way:

Yesterday, Variety reported that Spanish broadcast company Antenna 3 secured the rights to a number of HBO programs, including Game of Thrones.  A3 will offer the shows on its new, free-to-air Nitro channel. Looking at the article closely, they note a fall airing for Boardwalk Empire, so it seems that they’ll be airing their HBO programs anywhere from six months to perhaps a year after Canal+ Spain’s airings of HBO’s original dramas, which they recently secured in a multi-year deal.

Speaking of Canal+, a Spanish fan on Twitter, lasultimascosas, alerted us to the fact that Canal+ Spain has now revealed some information on when the show will air in Spain. Over on their official Facebook, they’ve posted a photo gallery titled, “The game begins in May on Canal+!” So, sometime in May, but no more precise airing information yet.

Blogger Sean T. Collins, who I know best from his incisive commentary on comics (both mainstream and alt), also happens to be a fan of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”. After a recent post about the TV series, he’s decided to expand a comment he made into a persuasive argument aimed at those who are curious about the series but aren’t decided on reading it.

A good piece, covering ground ranging from prose to themes to world-building, and all without spoilers. Have some friends or family you want to get into the series but they just aren’t budging? Point them at Sean’s write-up and it may just push them over the edge to giving the series a try.

Thanks to Manu at the French-language fantasy site, Fantasy.fr, we have a new interview with Natalia Tena which appears to have been carried out roughly in the same timeframe as Bleeding Cool’s interview in December. Here, Tena dates it a bit further by noting she had just finished filming the week before. The convention it was filmed at took place on December 18 and 19.

Tena’s remarks on Game of Thrones begins at around the six minute mark. She provides a quick synopsis of Osha, remarks on how cold Belfast was, expresses her love for Isaac Hampstead Wright (Bran), and reveals that at the time she was in the early part of reading A Storm of Swords. Good stuff… and one rather unique hat, to boot!

All right, after much clamoring, I’ve completed our high resolution screen captures from the new teaser. They can all be found in the Previews gallery, starting with this image.

What did we think of the teaser? It’s a very atmospheric presentation of the show, focused very tightly on the Iron Throne and a number of the key players, with some rather ominous dialog quoted (in a contextless way) throughout. A number of the pieces of the dialog were ones we reported in our further impressions from the 15 minute reel. We also love the final image, although whether it’s the final logo for the show, we do not know.

You can also see the Iron Throne still that was also released at the same time as the video.

Stunning new trailer for Game of Thrones—featuring some of the lines we previously reported, plus some new ones .... and our very first look at Ghost. Handsome doggie!

And that’s not all: the first official photo of the Iron Throne! To think, I got to sit in the same seat where Sean Bean, Michelle Fairley, Kit Harrington, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, Mark Addy, and Aidan Gillen had set themselves down…

But more on that later. ;) In the mean time, once you’ve stared at the video a few times, feel free to comb our screencaps

HBO has sent us word—in the midst of Golden Globe madness—that they are in fact airing a new promo piece for Game of Thrones right before the start of the final season premiere of Big Love, at 9PM Eastern. Tune in at 8:45PM to watch a special pre-show which will include this teaser!

It sounds like Making Game of Thrones is likely to release a new photo right around that time and, we hope, an on-line stream of the new promo piece. From what we’ve heard, this may be the same, short trailer shown to critics at the opening of the presentation last Friday at the Winter TCA.

We’ve previously reported the fact that both the U.S. and U.K. publishers of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” have planned to re-release A Game of Thrones with a tie-in cover featuring a photo or photos from HBO’s series. Well, it looks like we’ve now gotten our glimpse at the U.S. re-release cover from Bantam Spectra, as you can see in this promotional PDF from the publisher. The cover—to be released in trade and mass market paperback—features Daenerys and her silver, the very first Daenerys image HBO ever released. This is marked in the PDF as “For Solicitation Only”, which implies it’s possible that it won’t necessarily be the final art—and Random House has just confirmed that it’s a placeholder. But where’s this image without the solicitation mark from? Hrm…

Some other interesting details:

• It seems that some point HBO was mooting April 24th as the premiere date, as that’s what this PDF presently says.
• Paperbacks of the further novels in the series are being released with a banner on top citing the HBO series.
• The document indicates Random House (parent of Bantam Spectra) intends a full-court PR press, including television spots.
• HBO has advised Random House of a “multi-million dollar” marketing campaign in the run up to the April 17th premiere of the series.
• The re-release is due for March 22nd.

Tip of the hat to Olaf for the pointer!

This is our rather more thorough discussion of some of the things we actually see in the reel, to give more of a sense of the visual part of the adaption, but also to give a sense of some of the characters and scenes as can be grasped from what is, in the end, a very short reel that tries to capture a large part of the plot. You can read our more general, first impressions here. We’ll be focusing on the new scenes and details primarily, so in many cases we’re skipping over scenes we’ve seen in previous trailers, teasers, and the like. However, all that said, we’ll we open with the same material as HBO’s big preview trailer, what we assumed to be the reshot execution scene. Notice Theon‘s black hair.

(Note: Spoilers may be found below. Images are all previously released, but some may match scenes that were aired in the reel.)

Access Hollywood has a video interview from the past week’s TCA Winter press tour with executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, in which they discuss the characters and the actors, starting with Peter Dinklage and Sean Bean. I believe fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and some of its much-discussed mysteries are going to be very, very interested as to what they have to say about one Ned Stark…

MTV has a great little interview piece with Emilia Clarke, who plays Princess Daenerys. Some of her comments on the issues of sex scenes and on-screen nudity elicit some giggles from her in the accompanying video—very cute! Here’s a snippet:

The reporter, Kara Warner, promises more pieces from the TCA Winter Press Tour in days to come.

The Making Game of Thrones site has published a new entry in the Artisans series, focusing on the work of fight arranger Buster Reeves:

Thanks to the good offices of HBO, Linda and I were give the opportunity to watch the 15 minute clip compilation/“sizzle” reel that was first aired to critics at the TCA Winter tour. We’ve watched it several times now, and have discussed it a fair bit. After some consideration, this first post is just going to be about the general impression it makes, the sort of things we think anyone would be interested in. We’ll post some more detailed impressions of some of the specific scenes we see in a future post.

George R.R. Martin reports that he is back home after his whirlwind press tour, sitting down for a number of interviews and, of course, his big presentation at TCA. Though still a little tired from his recent illness, he’s planning to get back to work on A Dance with Dragons (aka Kong) tomorrow, although with a curtailed work schedule on doctor’s orders.

We’ll soon have a couple of reports from the Vroman’s signing and the post-signing meetup in the So Spake Martin collection, to add to the other reports that have trickled in.

And just as we said no international braodcasters had given firm airdates, a report comes in that HBO Hungary has promised they will make attempts to air the show the very day after the American premiere. That would be April 18th. The original blog post can be found here. The key quote, as provided by Google Translator, is:

From what The Rabbit and ipopic tell us, HBO Adria also showed The Pacific the day after its U.S. air date. This gives not only Hungarian fans, but possibly fans in the Balkan areas covered by HBO Adria, a serious boost to their hopes to see the show only very shortly after their lucky American and Canadian compatriots.

Latin American fans, how has HBO Latin America aired programs in relation to the U.S.? This could provide a hint as to when the show will premiere in your country.

The latest release of photos for HBO’s Game of Thrones are now in our gallery, with our usual annotations and links to related material. Most of the images have been placed in the character gallery, beginning with Bran. Two of the images stood out for us as better indicating scenes from the show, so we’ve placed them in the Preview gallery instead. You can see the thumbnails, and click through to their specific pages, below:

Finally, we’ve updated one of our screencaps from “Inside Game of Thrones” with additional information, now that certain things were confirmed over at TCA. You can check out the image, featuring our first blurry glimpse of the Mad King Aerys, here.

Although we still don’t have an exact airdate for HBO’s Game of Thrones in any territories besides the United States, there has been some more news of interest to international fans of the series. On the 7th, Variety reported that Canal+ Spain had secured rights to HBO’s original programming in a multi-year deal. This comes after our October report that Canal+ had specifically secured rights to A Game of Thrones. This move seems to be a trend with HBO’s international dealings.

Canal+ has since released a Spanish-language trailer, but no premiere date has been given beyond “soon”.

Furthermore, a tip from @aegjung points us to South African journalist and critic Thinus Ferreira’s exclusive report that the South African satellite channel M-Net has secured rights to the series, as well as a number of other highly-anticipated programs. The show will air on the M-Net Series channel. Again, no air date information is currently available.

Finally, via @GameOfThrones, we’ve been informed that HBO intends to publicize international airdates when HBO’s broadcast partners finalize and announce them. This is, so far as we know, a somewhat unusual step for HBO, and shows the growing, global entertainment market as well as a specific awareness about just how large an international fanbase George R.R. Martin’s novels have.

Another Game of Thrones interview piece from Access Hollywood, although this one is written rather than videoed. These remarks from executive producer and writer David Benioff comes from the roundtable with journalists which we expect to hear more from shortly. In the piece, Benioff is quoted discussing the maturity of the subject matter:

After today’s other interviews turned up, we expected some more were going to be coming out of TCA ... and it looks like we were right. Continuing the streak of excellent interviews was Winter is Coming with their report from the roundtable interview with George R.R. Martin, which several other reporters sat in on. It sounds similar to the interviews conducted in Belfast with some of the cast and crew.

George, as always, makes some excellent points, stressing the reality of television budgeting as well as the fact that while he has an extremely strong visual image of Westeros, the interpretation of the production very much works for him and he expects most fans will be the same. He also discusses a scene very briefly glimpsed in the extended Inside Game of Thrones video, confirming details that were told to me in October but which I was asked not to discuss at the time (I’ve updated our screencap with most of these details).

And then Access Hollywood jumped back into things with not one, but _two_ new video interviews featuring Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) and Emilia Clarke (Daenerys), which you can see below. Clarke’s interview is even more spoile-filled than Bean’s, if you can believe it!

Access Hollywood has a new, video interview with Sean Bean from this past weekend’s TCA press tour. See below for the details as he discusses who Ned Stark is, something of his training for the role, and more:

Maureen Ryan has shared excerpts from her one-on-one interviews with executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, author George R.R. Martin, and actress Emilia Clarke, over at her Stay Tuned blog for AOL’s TV Squad.

Some great tidbits, such as Benioff and Weiss using George’s reactions as a weather-gauge for fan reaction (good idea), George emphasizing that he believes the series will be the best-looking fantasy series that has ever been on television (but it won’t be The Lord of the Rings, because LotR had a far greater budget for comparable hours), and Clarke discussing her first day of filming as well as how the separation of her character from many of the others didn’t mean she didn’t get chances to socialize with fellow actors who weren’t part of her storyline.

Looking forward to the full interviews down the road, as April 17 approaches!

Edited: Mo and Ryan McGee have put up a second part of their Talking TV with Ryan and Ryan podcast, in which Maureen discusses TCA and Game of Thrones. She even includes a shoutout to Westeros.org, although a slip of the tongue meant your humble webmaster did not quite get his right name (close, though—Emilio is my godfather’s name, as it happens!) Thanks, Mo!

The Winter TCA has wrapped more-or-less, so far as HBO’s official presentation goes (recapped here), but quite a lot of interviews were arranged through and around it. Now Collider is the first to come out with a full-length interview of Sean Bean, who plays the lead role of Lord Eddard Stark. Some of the quotations appear to be woven in from Bean’s remarks at the presentation, but a large portion is entirely new and likely came from a roundtable or a one-on-one interview.

Some interesting remarks, including Bean reiterating that he did in fact read A Game of Thrones, not just the Ned chapters, and just how hot it was in Malta. However… if you know nothing about the series besides what you’ve read here and in official releases, we suggest you don’t read this one if you don’t want to be spoiled. Suffice it to say, some of the actor’s remarks give a rather major detail away…

Just a quick reminder for those in the L.A. metropolitan area that George R.R. Martin will be signing books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, starting at 5 PM. George has asked that those attending bring no more than one or two books, to make sure he can get to everyone in the two hours alloted and to take a little pressure off after his recent illness.

The terrific Maureen Ryan has offered on Twitter to ask one question each to Emilia Clarke and Sean Bean during one-on-one interviews taking place today.

To submit a question, you’ll need a Twitter account. Reply to her tweet. She’ll pick the most appealing ones to ask, but you only have until 12PM Pacific (that’s about 3 hours) to get it in! Thanks to Mo for offering fans this opportunity.

We expect yet more to trickle out today, but here’s a few more write-ups from journalists who were at the Winter TCA:

A lot happened today that should be of interest to any expectant Game of Thrones fanatic, and we’re going to try and recap all the highlights for you, culled from Twitter. Many, many thanks to the journalists, bloggers, and other media types who made this possible with their tweets. There was something of a carnival atmosphere which made everything that much more exciting:

Via James Hibberd, we now have a firm date on the premiere for Game of Thrones: April 17th! We knew it was going to be April, we knew it was going Sunday ... but now we know just what day in April it is.

If my math’s right, that means ... 100 days to go. Mark your calendars!

Tor.com is running a poll of its members, asking them to nominate works as being among the best science fiction and fantasy novels of the past decade (well, 2000 to 2010, but they make the rules!) Hundreds have already contributed, and more contributions would be welcome!

It goes without saying that A Storm of Swords is doing quite well in the polling and a very quick glance suggests it’s certainly in the top 10, and perhaps the top 5, so far.

We’ve been waiting quite eagerly to hear more about the 15 minute extended trailer, which we reported on last night. Now there’s not just one, but two quite detailed reports. Naturally, the first came from Winter is Coming, and includes commentary from Fire and Blood. Some interesting details in there, from the minor things—the change to the maester’s chain from a close-fitting collar to a long, broad loop (I’ve known about this since my visit to the Castle Black set, as Peter Vaughan [Maester Aemon] was wearing in the scene I witnessed filming)—to more substantial matter such as several brand-new scenes.

And now from critic (and fellow ASoIaF-enthusiast) Maureen Ryan has posted a thorough recap, breaking it down into general categories and going some of her likes and dislikes. For ourselves, the most notable bit was that Mo’s initial concerns about what she saw with the eastern scenes seem to have been assuaged a fair bit by Emilia Clarke, Harry Lloyd, and company. Excellent to hear! We expect to be hearing from quite a few more critics today, as there’s to be additional screenings.

Once all the madness is over, perhaps we’ll discuss some of the little details that have been changed in relation to the books, based on all these various reports, from the maester’s chain of office to the stained glass in the throne room and even the eyeliner that graces Khal Drogo. If anyone has any additional questions about some of these details, feel free to comment and I’ll see if I can address them in relation to the text.

At the Winter TCA tour, HBO has now screened the 15 minute extended trailer of Game of Thrones for journalists in the run-up to Friday’s thirty-minute presentation and various interviews with GRRM, the executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, and actors Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and Emilia Clarke. Thanks to WiCnet, who’s fortunate enough to be on the scene, here’s a quick preliminary run-down of the scenes shown, in the order that they were shown:

Looks like Canal+ Sweden is aiming for a Spring 2011 air date for Game of Thrones, according to their article covering the show. Headlined, “The most longed-for TV series ever” and claiming that “Not since The Lord of the Rings has there been so much interest in a book adaptation”, they go to discuss the massive fan following, the blogs and forums, and the like. We hope to eventually get a hold of a more precise air date.

At Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin explains his long silence over this holiday season having been due to an acute infection from E. coli. This led to an extended hospital stay from Christmas morning to just about New Year’s Eve, but antibiotics and other treatment have helped beat the illness. He is still recovering, and remains somewhat tired, but he confirms that he will follow through on his commitment to appear at the media-only TCA event this Friday, and will carry out his signing at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena on Sunday (he does ask fans who attend to go easy on him, however, and only bring a book or two for him to sign).

He also indicates that one of the announcements he hoped to make won’t be happening due to this, but he hopes to be fully recovered by the end of the month, and back to work before that. This does suggest he had hoped to spend the holidays finishing up A Dance with Dragons, but it appears he’ll need to get his health back on track.

Our best wishes to him as he recovers!

Over on Twitter, Sky Atlantic’s has confirmed that Game of Thrones will begin airing in the UK in April—the very same month it premires in the U.S. While it’s too much to hope that they’ll air the exact same day, we expect, it seems certain that it won’t be delayed more than a week or perhaps two.

Sky Atlantic will begin airing February 1st, and will be available to all current Sky customer free of charge through August 31st. After that time, it will remain available to customers who have subscribed to the Variety Pack. There’s also a Sky HD package upgrade which will provide Sky Atlantic in HD for those who subscribe to it.

The New York Times seems to show that fans have been ringing in the New Year with a healthy dose of A Game of Thrones. Their January 2nd list of mass market paperbacks shows George R.R. Martin’s novel—first published in that format in 1996—has entered the list at 25, while their following list places it up a spot to 24.

This resurgence of the series can be put down to the burgeoning awareness thanks to Game of Thrones, the HBO series, and fits the anecdotal evidence we’ve seen via Twitter, with every day seemingly bringing more people reading and tweeting about the series. We expect that Bantam’s planned reissue of the first novel with a cover featuring imagery from the series will likely land even higher as we get closer to the April premiere of the much-anticipated fantasy TV series.

A visit to the US Patent and Trademarks Office website has led to an interesting discovery: HBO has trademarked three new categories of Game of Thrones related products. We’ll discuss the three new categories, and what implications these new trademarks might have. Our first trademark story can be found here, from just over a year ago.