Westeros

HBO has just revealed that they have cast the two leads for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, known to fans world wide as Dunk and Egg. Peter Claffey, an Irish rugby player-turned-ctor, will be Ser Duncan the Tall. Dexter Sol Ansell has in turn been cast as Dunk’s squire Egg; Ansell’s been acting since the age of 4, and most recently appeared as the young Coriolanus in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to begin filming in Northern Ireland, the old stomping grounds of Game of Thrones, in June with production likely to last several months.

First announced in 2019, the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Banbridge, Northern Ireland has now officially opened its doors. The opening ceremony was attended by a number of actors from the series, including Kristian Nairn (Hodor), Natalie Emmanuel (Missandei), and Isaac Hampstead Wright (Bran Stark).

See below for the press release and additional images!

Kristian Nairn (“Hodor”), Nathalie Emmanuel (“Missandei”) and Isaac Hempstead Wright (“Bran Stark”) help to ‘Break the Chains’ for the brand-new Game of Thrones Studio Tour located in Northern Ireland.

Photo courtesy of Game of Thrones Studio Tour

It’s now official: the official Game of Thrones Studio Tour experience at Linen Mill Studios in Northern Ireland will open its doors on February 4th, and fans can already begin booking their tickets now.

According to the BBC, borough councils in County Down, Northern Ireland, have given permission for the Linen Mill Studios Game of Thrones tour experience which was first announced in April. It seems the global pandemic has delayed plans, as the original notion had been to open over the Spring in 2020, which obviously did not happen. The tour will essentially be a permanent exhibition of sets, props, and costumes with interactive elements at the studios that were used for some of the filming of the production (most notably one or more ship sets were made on site).

Earlier this month, I posted about our experience at the Dublin Worldcon and the Belfast Eurocon. But in Belfast, I had the opportunity—courtesy of Northern Ireland Tourism, who’ve invited us to see the “Game of Thrones Territory” twice before; the first of these is recorded here—to do a bit more than just convention events. Not only did I get to visit the Belfast leg of the Game of Thrones Exhibition and the Glass of Thrones stained glass monuments placed at notable locations within the city.

To read the full article, visit the Features page!

The Glass of Thrones campaign website has launched, and it’s quite an impressive thing featuring 3D renderings of the stained glass monuments inspired by the houses of Game of Thrones. It’s a nice way to experience them virtually, but it sure seems like nothing beats actually seeing them in person.

The first monument, dedicated to House Stark, is placed outside of Belfast’s City Hall.

With the final season of Game of Thrones just around the corner, Tourism Ireland is again teasing what has become a yearly tradition as they invite fans the world over to think of Northern Ireland as the “Game of Thrones Territory”. Carved doors scattered among historic pubs, limited edition stamps, an enormous pictorial tapestry—each of them has been a spectacular way to promote tourism for those who are interested in visting the land where the series has been based from the very start. This new campaign seems to be no less interesting, as this teaser video suggests:

The video may seem a bit mysterious to start with, but we think by the end what they’re hinting at is clear as glass.

Back in September, it was revealed that a Game of Thrones Legacy project was in an explortary phase to set up a permanent exhibition at the Linen Mill Studios. That exploratory phase is done, and the Game of Thrones Studio Tour is announced for a Spring 2020 opening. The plans sound ambitious, as the images and the press release below reveal!