Westeros

The official Youtube page for the Game of Thrones Studio Tour at the Linen Mill Studio in Northern Ireland— exclusive home to an enormous assortment of props, weapons, armor, costumes, and even whole sets from the TV show—has released a lengthy video where the show’s weapons master, Tommy Dunne, speaks at length about his work on the show as it relates specifically to the infamous catspaw dagger that has now become so central to House of the Dragon. See below for the video!

The original catspaw dagger as seen on Game of Thrones. The new version is closely based on it, but its proportions have been tweaked for House of the Dragon.

At “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin goes into some detail—as far as he’s able—as he confirms the news that a Jon Snow series is in development under the working title of Snow. In the process, he confirms that Kit Harington is the originator of the series (as revealed by Emilia Clarke in a recent BBC profile), that he and his own team of writers and consultants are working with Harington’s team, and that the project has actually been in development nearly as long as projects that we learned about last year rather than being a very new development.

There’s also some Winds of Winter information, as George notes that he was recently “back with Tyrion,” and GRRM also discusses his recent (misconstrued) remarks on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as well as continuing work on short films based on the works of the great Howard Waldrop.

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has provided fans a lengthy update on The Winds of Winter, HBO’s successor shows, and more… and in the process lets the cat out of the bag regarding one project we here at Westeros.org have been working on for the last couple of years.

We’ll provide a quick summary below:

The Three Chroniclers, by Chase Stone.

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.

A new book released today, James Andrew Miller’s Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers, is a massive 1,000 page tome that looks at the rise of HBO as the destination for prestige television from the past and all the way to the present. In the course of it, of course, the book can’t but help touch on Game of Thrones. While it covers ground already revealed in past interviews and books (such as James Hibberd’s Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon), there’s a few new details… particularly from a voice fans have not heard before, George R.R. Martin’s long-time entertainment agent, Paul Haas, concerning the final season and its relation to GRRM’s plans for A Song of Ice and Fire.

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George R.R. Martin in the Eyrie on the set of Game of Thrones.

Last month, the first ever official Game of Thrones convention was announced by WB Themed Entertainment and Creation Entertainment. Now they’ve followed up with an announcement of the first set of actors who will appear at the convention:

The event will take place from February 18th through the 20th at the Rio Hotel & Suites Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Select tickets are now already available for purchase, and more announcements of further talent to come.

Full press release below!

For a long while now, we have occasionally shared tweets from the official Westeroscraft twitter account, sharing yet another screenshot of the work-in-progress Westeroscraft server.  There, Minecraft fans who love A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are recreating Westeros block by block, and the results are truly impressive as the images and videos linked at their official wiki show. We can’t imagine how many hours of work have gone into it!

Below you’ll find a selection of recent tweets from Westeroscraft, providing some great images and explanations of what is being shown:

HBO has unleashed a wave of promotion for the “Iron Anniversary”, marking the 10th year since A Game of Thrones premiered. To mark the occasion, a teaser has been made… and many things have been planned during the month-long celebration, including some new and unique collaborations, curated viewing experiences, and a “MaraThrone” series binge which will bring actors from the show to rally fans towards giving to a number of charitable causes.

One of the most unique of the collaborations is with the world-famous jeweler firm Fabergé, who is producing a one-of-a-kind jewelled egg. More details below.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, George R.R. Martin has renewed his overall deal with HBO, this time for a reported “mid-eight figure” contract that spans five years. An overall deal is one in which any new ideas or pitches a creator generates will belong to the studio. George first signed an overall deal with HBO back in 2013, which was then renewed in 2016. The article proceeds to run through the five projects in various stages of development, as well as House of the Dragon which begins filming next month if all goes to plan. We did like the speculation on the animated project:

Last night (for us here in Sweden, in any case), Deadline added to our knowledge of the projects HBO is actively considering as part of a greater Game of Thrones-universe of successor shows. This appears to bring the total of shows in development to five or six, from what we’ve been told, including work on The Tales of Dunk and Egg, an unspecified animated project, a possible Robert’s Rebellion show (which we still think may be the A Song of Ice and Fire project mentioned by Vince Gerardis’s Startling Inc. website) and the three that follow:

• 9 Voyages, or The Sea Snake, in development with Rome-creator Bruno Heller, which would presumably be predominantly an adventurous series focused on the young Corlys Velaryon’s famous sea voyages.
• 10,000 Ships, about the flight of the Rhoynar from Essos and their long journey under the leadership of Princess Nymeria. No writers currently attached.
• Flea Bottom, about the notorious district in King’s Landing. No writers currently attached.

A legendary ice dragon in the Shivering Sea. Corlys Velaryon is never claimed to have seen one on his own attempt to sail as far north as men can, but other sailors have.

Following on recent news that HBO is taking pitches for prequels to Game of Thrones, The Hollywood Reporter has now revealed that another aspect of the process of turning Game of Thrones to new material is exploring creating an “adult-leaning” animated series. Per the article:

Funnily enough, we brought up the possibility—or likelihood, really—that HBO and HBO Max would be looking to expand the world into different forms beyond just a standard hour-long, multi-episode series, much as Disney and Paramount have done with Star Wars, Marvel, and Star Trek. In fact, the THR report notes that HBO was looking in this direction long before Disney announced its massive expansion of Star Wars series.

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.

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).

Devolver Digital Games, who have previously published the charming Reigns: Game of Thrones, are at it again with a Game of Thrones-themed mobile game. This time, That Silly Studio has developed Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows which has been released as an Apple Arcade exclusive for subscribers to the iOS service. The particular genre of mobile game—an “idler”—means that actions and decisions are made periodically, sometimes after hours or even days of nothing in particular going on.