Westeros

Joystiq has published a good interview with GRRM regarding the work being carried out by Cyanide Studio to develop the Game of Thrones action RPG (Pre-order: Amazon US Xbox, Amazon US PS3)  that’s due to be released May 15th for XBox, PS3, and PC.

Some interesting thoughts, and GRRM reveals his level of involvement (in brief: the plot and dialog is all Cyanide, but he’s been involved in making sure that the story works in a way that works with established canon) in the project. Below, check out the latest trailer from Atlus USA (the publisher in the US; Focus Home Interactive publishes it in Europe) to get a taste of that story:

Here’s some good news to tide us over while we wait on pins and needles regarding the renewal (which is coming, you can bank on it, but the exact details may be getting a lot of scrutiny and negotiation from the producers and HBO): Game of Thrones has been named a recipient of the 71st Peabody Awards. It’s a very prestigious award that’s expanded to cover many forms of electronic media, including television in numerous categories such as entertianment, which is where Game scored a nod. Fellow HBO show Tremé also took the award, as did HBO documentary Earth Made of Glass.

The awards are selected by a panel each year, and the panel changes its membership annually. This year, critic and confirmed fan Maureen Ryan was among the judges for the award this year, and she gives an excellent rundown of all the winners, as well as her comments on both the process (every recipient was selected unanimously as a requirement of the award rules) and the various titles getting a nod. Worth reading.

And of course, congratualtions to HBO, the producers, the writers, and everyone else involved in making the first season such a critical and popular success!

We’ve previously announced the news that Bantam will be publishing a poster map collection titled The Lands of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK) that will provide the most extensive look at the setting yet, all of it based on George R.R: Martin’s own map designs. It’s presently scheduled to be published in October of this year.

Now we’ve some more information we can share, courtesy of Random House :

The maps will be drawn by the experienced, freelance cartographer Jonathan Roberts. Having seen his preliminary layout of Braavos based on a map from GRRM that was done quite early in writing A Feast for Crows and was consequently not entirely consistent with what he described in the novels, Roberts definitely knows what he’s about. Fans will have nothing to worry about as far as the quality of the presentation and illustration goes.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the opportunity to have an outside contributor—not since last season—but it seems as good a time as any to start now! Marc Kleinhenz—who’s writing you’ve probably seen on gaming sites such as Gamasutra or IGN, or at fellow ASoIaF fan site Tower of the Hand—has shared with us a piece asking various fans and individuals familiar with the cities about what senses they associate with the series. Touching on the novels as much as on the TV show, his piece, “The Seven Senses of Westeros”, has some good quotes. Particularly glad he had a chance to ask artist Ted Nasmith about it, and of course Amin from the great Podcast of Ice and Fire, as well as Johnny from TotH.

Oh, and me! It’s a brief read, but I’m curious what you’d say to the question—what senses do you think about when you read or watch the series?

If you’d like to read about the essay I reference in my own answer, it can be found at George’s site here... Or, better yet, listen to him read it himself:

Via TV By The Numbers, we now have the ratings for the premiere, and they are pretty good—3.9 million first airing viewings (just shy of the 4 million many hoped for), but with a 2.0 in the important 18-49 demographic, which is the highest the show has ever received.

Besides that, additional airings garnered a further 2.37 million viewers, raising that total to 6.3 million, and that’s without On Demand or HBO Go factored in.

I think it’s safe to say that it’s just a matter of time for the pick up of season 3 to be announced!

Following the premiere of “The North Remembers”, MTV News revealed that they’ve developed a post-show program to talk about the show—yes, MTV knows Game of Thrones is a big deal! Josh Wigler hosts for MTV, and sitting with him in the studio are Newsarama‘s Lucas Siegel and the always-insightful Sean T. Collins, who blogs about the novels and TV show at his site Boiled Leather and now writes about the show for the august Rolling Stone (what a gig!) If you’ll recall, Sean joined Linda and I, as well as series editor Anne Groell, to annotate A Game of Thrones for the Subtext app.

Oh, and Linda and I were invited to record a very quick segment for this and the next episode and, hopefully, episodes to come!. Yes, it’s Skype—like the bad old days of Thronecast last year—but we’ll sort it out.

On top of that, we later briefly talked about the final scene of the episode with Josh, and ended up being quoted in this article on the topic.

For those who love what MTV’s doing, make sure to watch. Oh! And last year, we recorded podcasts with MTV Geek if you visit our Episode page and start going through each of the first ten episodes.

Amazing responses to the premiere last night, and fans in the UK are going to be watching the show on Sky Atlantic quite soon—don’t forget to hit the web for Thronecast, ladies and gentlemen! For those who’ve watched the first episode, we’ve updated our massive, massive “The North Remember” page with two new videos from HBO (an official recap and the ever-interesting Inside the Episode feature)...

Plus, we’ve already written up a preview hinting at what to expect in the next episode, “The Night Lands”, including HBO’s official episode preview video. Enjoy!

Enjoyed “The North Remembers”, I hope? Fans at our forum seem to have responded well, and have a lot to say to say the least.

Want a taste of more?

Thanks to our friends over at Sky Altantic’s Thronecast after-show, we have another first look exclusive on longer interview segments they have up with members of the cast and crew. We’ve already posted their Benioff &Weiss and Dance interviews, so let’s close up with my favorite character: Catelyn Stark, and the actor who’s brought her to life, Michelle Fairley.

You can read our own interview with Fairley here, and many others besides in our Features section.

Continuing our series of interviews from the press junket in London that we attended at the end of February—just one more left after this—is with one of the actors who has gotten the most attention from the success of Game of Thrones: Emilia Clarke, the actress who’s brought Daenerys Targaryen to life.

She was as charming and cheerful as you can imagine, meeting with us and fielding questions about her work. Topics range from various aspects of her performance, her familiarity with the novels (on the face of it, she’s probably read them more times than I have!), and a whole lot more. It was a pleasure speaking with her!

Read it here!

Thronecast is almost upon us—following hard on the April 2nd premiere of Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic in the UK—and they’ve kindly allowed us to have the exclusive first look at some of their interviews from the press junket. We’ve already posted the interview with David Benioff and Dan Weiss, but lets follow that up to revisit with Charles Dance, aka Lord Tywin Lannister, whom we have recently interviewed ourselves.

You’ll get a bit more information… including spoilers, both for the first three novels in the series and for this season, so don’t play the video if that’s a problem!

For many other interviews, visit our featured interview page!

Continuing our series of interviews Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. This is actually the third time we’ve interviewed Nikolaj—see here and here—and as always it’s a pleasure to hear from him.

This is the first time we’ve met him in person, and he’s as charming as you might expect. He takes a great deal of relish in this role he plays—a role that he’s indicated (in another interview) features what may well be the best scene he’s ever had to play as an actor—and brings his own perspective to bear on the most loathed knight in the Seven Kingdoms, what makes him tick, and what he wants. And there’s hints, here and there, of things he’s really not allowed to talk about…

Read it here!

Thanks to our friends over at Sky Atlantic’s Thronecast—where Linda and I will, indeed, be resuming our weekly presence!—we’ve received the opportunity to share Kelly-Anne Smith’s interview with Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss from the international press junket that we attened late in February. Here it is!

Stay tuned, another interview is going up shortly (you can catch up on the one’s we’ve published to date here... and we’ve our own interview with Benioff and Weiss set to be released tomorrow!

Continuing our series of interviews from the international press junket—see here for those, and all of our season 1 interviews as well!—we had the chance to meet with and talk to actor Kit Harington about his role as Jon Snow.

The young actor is definitely a favorite with some fans, and he discusses a bit of the fun fans have with the series, while sharing anecdotes from Iceland about the cold, fight scenes, and newcomer to the series Rose Leslie. Plus some intriguing thoughts about what Jon Snow thinks about his mother, these days, as well as the benefits (and pitfalls!) of working in scenes that feature significant digital elements (i.e. direwolves).

Read it here!

P.S.

This is actually the second interview we had with Kit—he was kind enough to talk to us last year as well, and you can see that interview here. And for those hungry for more interviews? Not one, but two interviews on Saturday, leading up to a final interview from the junket on Sunday. Don’t forget that Sunday is #GoTDay, and that we’ll be live commenting the first episode of season 1, “Winter is Coming”, while it airs on HBO2. See here for more, and find out who else is going to be commenting the episodes during the Game of Thrones marathon!

A very long, very interesting interview with GRRM has just been published over at Marvel.com, the official website of Marvel Comics. It’s very comics-centric, reaching back to his fan letters in the 60’s, his visits to Comic-Con, his views on the recent Marvel movies, and more. And, yes, some A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones talk.

Check it out!