Westeros

On top of the two trailers to announce the June 16th premiere of House of the Dragon, HBO has also released some new images featuring characters (and one dragon). You can see them below!

Not just one but two trailers have dropped. A Black Trailer and a Green Trailer, further doubling own on the sides in the conflict.

It sounds like Thursday is likely to see a new trailer or teaser for the forthcoming second season of House of the Dragon, according to the latest post from the official sites. Two tweets promise that everyone must choose between “Team Green” and “Team Black”, and each tweet features dramatic images of some of the leading members of each party… plus our first look, I believe, at King Aegon II’s golden dragon (on green rather than the book canon black) that also answers one of the enduring heraldic questions of the show.

More on that below, but here’s the tweets:

ALL MUST CHOOSE. This promotional banner features the Greens and the Blacks, represented by Aegon, Ser Criston Cole, Aemond, and Alicent on the one side, and Rhaenyra, Daemon, Rhaenys, as well as Corlys Velaryon on the other.

Interesting news broke last night that HBO is gearing up to explore the extensive history of Westeros with a new spinoff series centered around Aegon’s Conquest. According to a report from James Hibberd and Borys Kit for The Hollywood Reporter, the network has enlisted much-in-demand writer Mattson Tomlin to develop the project.

Last year, we noted news out of Variety that HBO had starting looking into bringing Aegon’s Conquest to the small screen (and, perhaps, even the big screen—a theatrical lead-in was under discussion) and actively sought a writer to head the development of this thrilling prequel series. That search seems to have ended.

The burning of Harrenhal during Aegon’s Conquest, as depicted by artist Marc Simonetti for the 2023 World of Fire and Blood Calendar

A press release from the WB Shop brought to our attention that HBO is releasing some new House of the Dragon merchandise for this year, taking inspiration from the forthcoming Lunar New Year on February 10th to dub this the “Year of the Dragon”. As you’d expect, there’s a strong dragon-focus.

We’ll point out some of the items they make a point of, after this pretty cool banner featuring Caraxes

At this year’s Primetime Creative Arts Emmys, House of the Dragon entered the show with a total of eight nominations in the category (plus a final, yet-to-be-determined, nomination in the regular Emmys for Outstanding Drama). Unfortunately, other shows—particularly HBO sibling The Last of Us—snatched away most of the prizes, but in one category the show proved victorious: Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-fi Costumes! Leading the names credited with the victory was season 1 costume designer Jany Temime, who posted about it on her Instagram:

The Primetime Emmys will air next Sunday.

Last week, George posted an update to Not a Blog recounting a trip he took to the UK in late October and early November, in which he refers to meetings with his UK publishers concerning both A Song of Ice and Fire and Wild Cards, and then added some details regarding the play currently called The Iron Throne (it’s a working title):

The play was first announced way back in March of 2021. Dominic and Duncan would be Dominic Macmillan, the play’s director, and Duncan Cooke, the playwright.

And then George wrote a bit about his days working with Ryan Condal and the writers of House of the Dragon....

George R.R. Martin and House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal on the set of the TV show, in what may be the godswood of Harrenhal.

A month ago, it was revealed that press had been given a screening of a season 2 teaser. We speculated then that it would be something fans would get to look at within a month… and as it happens, to the very day of our post, the season 2 teaser has been released by HBO. See it below!

Besides this, yesterday HBO released a pair of new character posters featuring Rhaenyra and Alicent… and now today they’ve released quite a few stills or on-set photographs from the new season, to whet the appetites of fans. See those below!

At a press event, HBO’s Casey Bloys unveiled a first-look trailer at the second season of House of the Dragon, according to Variety. While details of the trailer are embargoed, we’re guessing that it’ll air within the month, and perhaps within days.

Bloys also indicated something that seems to confirm our speculation when a casting call went out in the UK: Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is “will begin shooting next spring, pending the end of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.” That caveat is a curious detail there, which suggests that they plan for at least one significant role going to a North American actor… or maybe they’re just wanting to leave open the possibility? But I’m guessing the former, they have their sights on someone.

Will those fan-casting Oscar Isaac as Baelor Breakspear be getting their wish? We’ll have to wait and see!

With the recent end of the WGA strike (the second longest in its history), Variety has issued a report touching on Hollywood trying to get back into motion after the work stoppage, citing a number of shows. One paragraph in particular, however, discusses HBO specifically, noting that a number of their shows saw no production at all… but one big one, House of the Dragon, has in fact wrapped filming:

Summer 2024 sounds pretty good to us.

Of course, besides HotD, the end of the strike also means that scriptwriting can resume on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which HBO had ordered straight to series just before the strike.

Back in May, the beginning of the WGA strike shuttered many productions, but not House of the Dragon. Now SAG-AFTRA has called a strike for many of the same reasons as the WGA… but it’s currently being reported that a couple of UK-based productions will continue filming because actors who are members of SAG are also members of the UK’s Equity, and their contracts are (allegedly) under the terms of Equity. And of course, one of those productions not shutting down (reportedly) is, once again, House of the Dragon. According to the Deadline article, the UK’s laws don’t allow sympathetic strikes, and actors are receiving guidance telling them to continue to report in to work if their contracts are under Equity rather than SAG.

This year’s nominees for the Emmys have been announced, and HBO’s House of the Dragon has done well for itself with six

eight (or nine, sort of) nominations, contributing to the phenomenal HBO/MAX total nominations of 127, and tying a decades-old record (set by CBS in 1973 and matched by NBC in 1993) of 4 separate dramas nominated in Best Drama.  See the categories below!

Over the last weeks, HBO has been releasing a series of videos titled “Inside the Craft”, exploring different aspects of bringing House of the Dragon to life. The latest entry focuses on armor, and particularly the armor of the Gold Cloaks. It features show runner Ryan Condal, armourer Simon Brindle (who worked on Game of Thrones), and costume designer Jany Temime. Some really good, close-up looks at a number of suits of armor, and some glimpses of armor from the tourney in the first episode that were seeing only fleetingly:

The two previous videos were focused on the weapons and Dark Sister, and the costumes and Rhaenyra’s wedding dress.

As part of its Emmy awards coverage, Deadline has been publishing examples of episode scripts that have been submitted for consdieration as final nominees, and now we’ve come to House of the Dragon‘s turn as they have now published the pilot script for the first episode, “The Heirs of the Dragon”, and they’ve done so in a draft that includes various revisions, some of which were scenes or pieces of dialog that never made it to the final cut of the production.

There’s some particularly interesting discussion between Viserys and Daemon regarding the Targaryens and their dragons that was dropped, and I notice that it seems like our first introduction to Daemon was supposed to be his commanding the City Watch on its violent purge (notice that all the detailed description of Daemon and Dark Sister in that section)... but then at some point it was decided that instead we should first meet him in a scene that focuses his relationship to Rhaenyra, in the throne room.

Very interesting report from Deadline Hollywood‘s Nellie Andreeva following an interview with Franesca Orsi, HBO’s head of drama. It’s a wide-ranging interview covering a lot of HBO’s shows, but for our purposes, the most interesting tidbits relate to House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, and potential other Westeros shows.

Addressing the on-going production of season 2 of House of the Dragon, Orsi noted that HBO was fully prepared to rewrite and reshoot anything that needed fixing once the WGA strike ends and the writers can take up their pens again to do writing work, but until then they are confident with the completed scripts they had to work with and have not dealyed producation at all. Speaking of a potential season 3 approval, it sounds like they’re not far from giving an immediate go ahead to season 3 to try and improve the turnaround from season to season. That said, how many seasons for the show in total remains a question: