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!

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.

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!

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.

Now that production is in full swing, casting news for the second season of HBO’s House of the Dragon was sure to be around the corner… and today we get the first tranche of new actors and roles for the show, courtesy of Variety. All four are characters from the original source material, described in George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood:

• Gayle Rankin will play Alys Rivers, “a healer and resident of Harrenhal”. Spoilers at the Wiki of Ice and Fire.
• Multiple Olivier and Tony Award-winning actor Simon Russell Beale plays Ser Simon Strong, castellan of Harrenhal. Spoilers at the Wiki of Ice and Fire
• Freddie Fox plays Ser Gwayne Hightower, son of Otto Hightower and brother to Queen Alicent. Spoilers at the Wiki of Ice and Fire. Fans will remember that Gwayne rode against Prince Daemon at the tournament in the first episode, but that was a stunt actor who wore a helm throughout.
• Abubakar Salim will play Alyn of Hull, described as “a sailor in the Velaryon fleet” who participated in the Stepstones campaign. Spoilers at the Wiki of Ice and Fire

Some significant House of the Dragon news reported by Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva, who has received word (and confirmed some parts of it with HBO) that for “story-driven” reasons the plan of a 10 episode 2nd season has been changed to an 8 episode 2nd season, which has necessitated some re-writing and likely has contributed to the slight delays to the planned commencement of filming (however, production is imminent and the prospective air date remains summer 2024). Per Andreeva’s report:

Interestingly, Andreeva notes that even with the reduction of two episodes, Condal and GRRM are still discussing whether three or four seasons work better. Her piece goes into some more detail about just what was moved out of the 2nd season for the prospective 3rd season, which we’ll quote below and speculate on a bit.

The nominees for the 2013 Hugo Awards are in the process of being announced. Last year, Game of Thrones won in the Dramatic Presentation - Long Form category… but perhaps not unexpectedly, this year it did not garner sufficient votes to end up in that category. Instead, it seems enough people nominated a specific episode—“Blackwater”—to win it a place in the Dramatic Presentation - Short Form category. This episode, written by George R.R. Martin himself, is widely considered a crowning achievement for the series to date.

Here’s the full list of nominees in the category, the winners of which wll be announced at Lonestar Con 3, this year’s World Science Fiction convention.

HBO and Best Buy have partnered together for a special launch event at Best Buy’s Union Square store in New York City for the Game of Thrones: Complete Second Season Blu-ray and DVD sets (Pre-order: US Bluray, US DVD, UK Bluray, UK DVD), and it sounds like they’ve some exciting plans in store. Read on to learn just what’s going on… and how you can win a chance to get early access to the event!

February 19 sees the release of the Game of Thrones Complete Second Season setin the US, and March 4th should see it out in the UK and more widely in Europe (Pre-order: US Bluray, US DVD, UK Bluray, UK DVD).

For those anticipating it, we’ve shared clips and details, but thanks to HBO, we’ve had the opportunity to get an early review copy. In brief, it lives up to the production values of the previous season, and in some places (such as the Histories, which I consider my personal favorite extra) exceeds them. The Blu-ray set is a showcase of the show’s very high production values, revealing it in the full glory of 1080p.

The official Game of Thrones Youtube channel has posted up a couple of clips from the upcoming season 2 collection (Pre-order: US Bluray, US DVD, UK Bluray, UK DVD), one of which I’m sure is new and features Rose Leslie as Ygritte giving a wildling’s perspective on the history of the Night’s Watch:

The other is another glimpse of the “Inner Circle” roundtable of actors and producers, featuring Lena Headey discussing her work with Peter Dinklage; think we’ve seen the last part before, and maybe all of it:

This is a clever way to promote the forthcoming release of the Game of Thrones second season complete collection being released in the US on February 19th (Pre-order: US Bluray, US DVD, UK Bluray, UK DVD): My Watch Begins, a website where fans can record their taking of the oath of the Night’s Watch, led by Jon Snow himself. Very fun, especially as you can mix in other voices with your own, creating a legion of men (and women!) taking the black. It also looks like some special event is being planned in New York City on the 18th if you click the #taketheblack hash tag link at the bottom of the site. A mass oath-taking in Central Park, maybe?

UPDATE: Here’s a promotional video tied-in to the new online experience that Campfire have made:

And speaking of Jon Snow, here’s another preview of the extras that are coming on the Blu-ray set (which we’re hoping to get a review copy of in the next couple days—stay tuned!), courtesy of MTV, where Kit Harington discusses just how cold it can get in Iceland:

Courtesy of HBO, here’s one of our very favorite things that come from the Season 2 Blurays (Preorder: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk): the extras featuring the History of Westeros. Last season’s were amazing, but we’re told that this set is going to be even better, with more animation and that wonderful narration by the actors delivering these bits of knowledge as their characters. Here’s Wisdom Hallyne, the pyromancer, telling us all about his order and wildfire:

Have to love Roy Dotrice.

The Bluray hits retailers on February 19th in the U.S., early March in the U.K. and Europe.

You may remember this from last year’s excellent season 1 Bluray set, when the Stark kids (Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright) provided an acapella rendition of the Game of Thrones theme.

Well… they’re back for more. It’s quite amusing (especially when Maisie breaks out into fits of giggles)! See below this excerpt from their commentary from the Season 2 Bluray (Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK) and DVD (Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK). The discs are set to be released on February 19th in the US, and we have more information about their full contents in this previous report.

And the short lists continue to roll out, as the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press offer up their nominees for next year’s awards. Following its first season, Game of Thrones picked up up two nominations each at the SAG Awards and the Golden Globes, but this time around, it looks like the second season just didn’t make much of an impression with the nominating bodies. For the SAG Awards, the show did manage to repeat its nomination for Best Stunt Ensemble (which it won last season), but missed out on repeating for Best Drama Ensemble.

As for the Globes, last year saw nominations in Best Drama and Best Supporting Actor for Peter Dinklage (which Dinklage went on to win), but this time the show drew no nominations. It’s shaping up to be a somewhat quieter awards season for the series, although the Emmys will doubtless bring a host of technical nominations, as it has in previous seasons.