Westeros

Hot on the heels of EW‘s exclusive, the Hollywood Reporter has published a two-part extravaganza from Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon chronicler James Hibberd (Part 1, Part 2 digging further into both the origins of House of the Dragon, its story and production, and the future of the show as well as other shows in the Game of Thrones universe.

Prince Daemon trying out his brothers chair.

We’ve reported previously that James Hibberd will be publishing an in-depth oral history of Game of Thrones—filled with new interviews and never-before-heard anecdotes from behind the scenes—titled Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon. Over at EW, a lengthy excerpt has been posted sharing a wide-array of comments from producers (Benioff and Weiss first and foremost, as well as Bryan Cogman), actors (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, Jason Momoa, Mark Addy, Iain Glen), and executives (most notable Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler) concerning the original pilot which was heavily reshot by Tim van Patten, including recasting of several key roles. There’s some decidedly new details just in this short excerpt, which bodes well for the rest of the book’s insights. Below are a couple of quotes from GRRM himself that are interesting.

A very interesting report has come by way of EW’s James Hibberd, revealing that while season 3 is still just 10 episodes—compared to the 12 episodes the other big HBO drama, Boardwalk Empire, gets—these episodes will often run 4-5 minutes longer than they did in the previous season, squeezing in just a bit more content per episode. If the season averages out to 57 minutes an episode, that would practically be equivalent to an 11 episode season at season 2’s run time.

And on top of that, it looks like the season finale is going to run 60 minutes, or perhaps even just beyond that, something that the executive producers Benioff and Weiss note requires special permission from HBO due to scheduling.

Here’s the relevant quotes: