Westeros

Long in the planning, Making Game of Thrones has now published an interview we did shortly after my visit to Belfast back in October—I was quite honored to be considered a worthwhile subject! The genesis of Westeros.org, our involvement in the fandom, and my impressions of the visit are briefly covered. And now that that’s published…

The set visit reports resumes! Shortly after my return from Belfast, I started posting a bit of the experience, but I stopped before I actually got into Paint Hall, instead describing how it came to be that I had this opportunity (an unprecedented one, I’m told) and breakfast with George and Parris. Now, in this first installment, my visit to the Paint Hall-proper, beginning with a lonely tower and a high hall…

More parts to come!

As predicted, HBO has launched The Maester’s Path, a series of interactive puzzles. This is viral marketing at its finest, from what we can see so far… and also as predicted, the symbols that we and others received are the key to the first puzzle. Feel free to look at them here!

Every monday will see a new puzzle, as you work to gain knowledge. We’re guessing that perhaps each week is going to see the “influencers” chosen by HBO possibly receiving a new package with more clues for future puzzles. The site promises “great rewards”... wonder what those might be?

The new trailer for Game of Thrones has brought new screen caps, with our usual commentary and linking. Some great new images here, and a few lines that haven’t been heard in the promos and teasers as of yet. Personally, we love the glimpses of heraldry in the tourney scene, and the amazing shot of a tourney “accident” which just looks incredible, but others will find much else to love: the godswood of Winterfell (the first screen capture in the series), or Winterfell itself, or perhaps the bloody aftermath of a certain fight in the streets, to name just a few.

A brand new teaser has come out form HBO tonight… well, more or less. Drawing heavily from some of the other teasers, especially the amazing “Iron Throne” teaser, this new one includes some amazing footage—footage which seems to feature the fully edited, color-graded material we’ll see on screen—and some terrific snippets of dialog from scenes we haven’t generally seen as of yet outside of certain screenings (including the 5 minute reel critics have seen). Enjoy!

A few new screen caps tomorrow in our gallery, but you can find the “Iron Throne” teaser bits largely covered starting here.

The Maester’s Path publicity campaign has led to quite a few remarks from people who suggest they’d love to own something like the maester’s kit and the scents it includes. While we’re fairly sure selling these packages to the mass market isn’t in the cards, we have had a report from someone visiting the HBO Shop which promises some more Game of Thrones goodness to come.

According to TigerLily1276, while there to pick up some Tru Blood a salesperson at the store excitedly told her about merchandise due in mid-March for the TV series. She reports that unisex t-shirts featuring each of the Great Houses (he apparently said seven, but I am unsure whether they’d highlight houses such as Tully, Tyrell, and Martell this firt season) as well as mugs or statues featuring sigils of each of the great houses. He gave a mid-March date, so if that pans out, we’ll have some interesting new things to oogle in a couple of weeks.

By sheer happenstance, a visit to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office website for other reasons led me to check if there was anything new on the Game of Thrones front… and as it happens, there was. A brand new trademark application, dated February 11th, has been entered into the system raising the total marks related to the series to 18. This trademark is IC class 24, and covers, “Bed sheets, pillowcases, comforters, bedspreads, quilts, pillow shams, bed dust ruffles, bed skirts, duvet covers, comforter covers, bed throws, blanket throws, mattress pads, bed blankets, bed sheets; towels, bath towels, kitchen towels, washcloths; textile wall hangings; fabric banners; handkerchiefs; tablecloths, napkins and placemats.”

We admit that we’ve zeroed-in on the fabric banners and wall hangings part of this, because .... well, this is Westeros; banners and wall-hangings are common. And, as it happens, over the years of “A Song of Ice and Fire” fan-activity, banner have been one of the things most-requested from the fan base, leading fans to making their own for various occasions. Official banners featuring the gorgeous heraldry from the series would be just what a lot of fans might be hoping for.

We’ve updated our gallery with scans of the various scrolls Linda and I received yesterday.

Now, a comment from C.C. Chapman—a stakeholder in Campfire who used to work with them—noted that knowing how these things works, there may be hidden details or secrets inside of the package. Suffice it to say, we’ve looked over everything as closely as we could—no secret compartments, no mysterious inscriptions, and so on—but there are a few little details that spring to mind as possible clues in case future parts of the Maester’s Path present puzzles or other mysteries. For example, why is there no House Arryn moon-and-falcon sigil in the Vale, while there’s a Greyjoy kraken? Why is there no Riverrun, despite the Tully fish? Why does the Eyrie get marked out, but not Pyke? These could have no real rhyme or reason at all to them beyond clarity and space, of course… but maybe this is a hint we’ll be learning more about the Vale, the riverlands, and the Iron Islands in future installments?

Of course, it seems like we won’t actually see Riverrun in the first season, and the Iron Islands is only briefly mentioned, and that’s largely because of Theon Greyjoy, so it’d be odd to focus part of the experience on regions that don’t figure heavily in the first season’s story. But the Eyrie… that one does figure, so we’re going to keep an eye out for it.

The other thing that leapt out at us are the colors and symbols associated with each place. The Dothraki sea has orange blocks of color,  The Inn at the Crossroads has purple, King’s Landing has green, Pentos is red, and Winterfell is blue. You can also see the descriptions and the symbols associated with each scent as well. These may be nothing more than a pleasant visual detail, to give the scrolls a bit of extra visual impact, but… but… Something makes us think that if there are any secrets to be found in the Maester’s Path, these symbols are going to be keys to unlocking them. In the Citadel, the archmaester’s test the knowledge of novices in their respective areas of expertise, and the novice who shows enough knowledge can earn one of the links in his maester’s chain. Will these symbols (and the colors associated with them, perhaps) become part of a puzzle?

We’ve no idea.  But just in case, we’ve collected the symbols. If there is a puzzle in the end, we suspect it’ll be at The Maester’s Path, a mysterious website set up by HBO that promises, “Winter is coming”. We suspect there’ll be more information in coming weeks, just as more parts of the maester’s path are going to be unveiled.

A couple of months back, Linda and I were asked to get in touch with HBO’s marketing team on something cool they were working on, which was our first hint that… well, something cool was up that wasn’t just Game of Thrones. It was all very mysterious, but two months later, here we are, the honored recipients of “the first link in the Maester’s Path”. In the jargon of the marketing industry, this is apparently called an interactive multi.part marketing initiative, but we just call it awesome. Although a snafu on our end led to a day’s delay in receiving the package, we came to it quite fresh. See below for video and images as we discuss the package, as well as links to other reactions from across the web (and from some unexpected quarters).

Variety has an article discussing the year-to-year increase of sales of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels, thanks to the upcoming Game of Thrones TV series from HBO. A key quote from the article:

Assuming they’re talking about percentages, the series has nearly doubled in sales year-on-year ... and this is likely to explode when the show airs. Charlaine Harris’s novels all hit the bestseller list when the series took off, and though it’s unclear whether Game of Thrones can capture the same wave of new readers, it certainly aims to try. We’ve heard that Harris’s publishers noted that some of her novels increased sales many times over (I believe 4000% was noted for some of her backlist). A buyer for Barnes & Noble is quoted indicating that he certainly believed the TV show would do for GRRM’s series what True Blood did for Harris’s.

March 22nd will see the release of A Game of Thrones with brand new cover art, using an image from the TV series. 250,000 copies of the paperback will be put out in bookstores in the U.S., and Voyager in the U.K. plans to do the same sometime in mid-March according to reports. Winter is coming ... but it looks like Christmas is already here for the publishers of the series!

Back on the 11th, we reported that representatives of various foreign broadcasters—both those who had secured the rights to Game of Thrones and those who were still undecided—had had the first two episodes screened to them. The word from HBO was that the response was “VERY positive”, and they expected to see more foreign rights deals to be secured on the strength of it.

Now we can report a summary of some remarks from one of the representatives who was in attendance. Göran Danasten, head of fiction acquisitions for Swedish broadcaster Sweden, had some thoughtful commentary on what he saw and what his thoughts were about it. His remarks (in Swedish) can be found starting here

After a bit of a delay, our gallery has been caught up to date with the latest videos. Most over-due are screencaps of the Maisie Williams Artisans’ video. Not too much commentary on these, but there’s some great shots of Arya with Syrio. More significantly, we’ve now completed screencapping and annotating the “Invitation to Westeros” promo, with quite a few observations mixed in that fans might be interested in.

The first image of that can be found from that series, featuring Daenerys, can be found here.

Via The Guardian, Sky Atlantic has just announced that Game of Thrones will premiere in the U.K. on April 18th, the day after the U.S. premiere on HBO! This was very much hoped for by British fans, and it looks like Sky and HBO agreed with them that this. And just to head off those questions, we asked clarification as to whether it’d be just for the premiere or not. Here’s what Sky Atlantichad to say:

A brand new behind-the-scenes video from Making Game of Thrones, as they show us glimpses of each of the major areas that are the focus of the story. Lots of good stuff to be seen ... and it looks, from some tweets, that they actually aired it just now, too!

Locus Online, the web site for the leading trade magazine for SF/F publishing, has a list of the best heroic fantasy of 2010 from contributor, Larry Nolen. An excellent list all-around, from what I’ve heard of some of the works. Included in the list is Warriors, the anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It contains “The Mystery Knight” by GRRM, a tale of Dunk & Egg set in the past of the Seven Kingdoms, as well as a number of other stories from notable authors such as Naomi Novik, Diana Gabaldon, Robin Hobb, and more.

After thirty years as partners, George R.R. Martin and Parris decided to make it official, marrying during a small, private ceremony on Tuesday, February 15th. You can read about it over at “Not a Blog”. Of particular note is a list of charities; rather than send flowers or other gifts, they ask that donations be sent to those worthy causes instead.

Below you can find more information and photos.

James Cosmo, who plays Lord Commander Jeor Mormont, paid a visit to an old acquaintance to wish them happy birthday. The Beaver County Times provides a report, and it’s what you’d largely expect from a local paper… but we do have a couple of remarks concerning Game of Thrones:

We hope to have a bit more information soon, but here’s the very first screenshots of Game of Thrones: Genesis, the RTS being for PC being produced by Cyanide and published by Focus Home Interactive. Linda and I have been consulting on this project for quite a few months now, but we admit, the move from the early art assets we saw to fully rendered 3D is kind of amazing.

More below the cut.

It looks like its official: CANAL+ Sweden and Finland (well, they’re one of the Nordic countries—close enough!) have moved from “late spring” to May for its airing of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which means that CANAL+ Norway and CANAL+ Denmark will be following suit as the premier for CANAL+ shows is always the same in these four countries. No exact word on air date, but CANAL+ Sweden informs us that beginning of May is their target and they hope to soon to be able to announce a firmer date. CANAL+ has an official page for the series, which we expect will be updated when the official airdate is decided.

You can read the press release either translated into English or in Swedish as part of a new feature to the site where we will give news particularly relevant to Sweden and Scandinavia in Swedish. Simply look for the links to the Swedish version at the bottom of the article.

GRRM has a couple of updates at “Not a Blog” today. First, he has an intriguing post about Skull Island, which happens to be the fictional place where King Kong is found. Kong, of course, is his term for A Dance with Dragons. Reading into his remarks there, it seems that presently he has one POV nearly complete, another being troublesome, and one more beyond that to write. Does this mean it stands at three chapters left to call it done, with one nearly complete? That seem to be the case, but as we know, difficult chapters have sometimes only be resolved by splitting them up, or going back and rewriting other chapters to provide a new approach, so we’ll have to wait and see.

The other item is a new miniature from Dark Sword Miniatures and Tom Meier, this one featuring Maester Luwin. Of particular note, GRRM points out that the rendition of Luwin’s chain is very near to his own intention (Grand Maester Pycelle’s chain is much more elaborate, being multiple chains woven together and ornamented). As we’ve noted about the Game of Thrones TV series, they’ve gone in quite a different direction, with a very long necklace with great, wide loops of metal making up its length.

Finally, for those who use Twitter, George has given us permission to directly feed his “Not a Blog” RSS feed to Twitter via westerosorg. If you don’t use an RSS reader and Twitter is your primary source for notifications about updates, feel free to follow us and keep an eye open for the tweets, which will use the #notablog tag.

The Making Game of Thrones site has a new article, by way of Bryan Cogman, which is essentially the official pronunciation guide for the first season.

There’s been a few items of note this last week, though on the whole it’s been a bit quieter. Here’s a round-up of some of the more recent news items that may be of interest of fans of the series:

For those who “A Song of Ice and Fire” fans who enjoy Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, one of the biggest frustrations have been the fact that Bantam’s editions of the series have had a number of typographical errors. We got in touch with the editor for the series, Anne Groell, to ask her about the situation in light of the fact that new editions of A Game of Thrones were being solicited for March 22nd, which would include the HBO cover art. We asked if this release would featured any improvements in terms of such errors, and here’s what Anne had to say:

So if you’re one of those disappointed in the conversion to e-book in the past, go ahead and download fresh copies from your Amazon Kindle library to see how the updated e-texts, such as A Game of Thrones, are shaping up.

For those in the UK, Voyager has re-released the first two books with substantial proofreading, and books three and four are due in late February and March respectively. Word is that the texts are cleaned up from their earlier state, although some reports indicate that the proofing has not been perfect.

Last week’s news of an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” drew a great deal of interest, including an EW.com piece on the topic. It’s an ambitious endeavor, adapting a bestselling epic fantasy series in a medium that generally doesn’t see too much epic fantasy, but GRRM has selected some excellent partners in the effort. Published jointly by Dynamite (publishing the single issues) and Bantam (who’ll publish the collected graphic novels), the first novel will see the art of Tommy F. Patterson realizing Martin’s vast world, while author Daniel Abraham—an old hand at adapting George’s work to comic form— handles the scripting duties.

Below you’ll find our interview with Abraham, touching on a range of topics including his approaching to scripting, his history with comics, the particular challenges of adapting “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and more.

Long in the making, yesterday saw the publication of Other-in-Law’s map of Westeros at his Deviant Art page. A huge, 10mb file stretching more than 3,000 by 10,000 pixels, it puts together all of his regional maps and adds both some adjustments and a terrific series of bordering elements, including a depiction of the Seven and King Aerys II with his Kingsguard. There’s a number of “easter eggs” as well, amusing references to figures both past and present. On top of that, it’s an extraordinary catalog of the heraldry of the setting, drawn from the books and GRRM’s heraldic notes (note that the placement of some these arms are, however, speculative).

Although Tear’s map is a stunning achievement for a fan cartographer, easily equalling any other map for the series, we have to say that we’ve never seen a map that’s this outright charming. And all of it created by OiL in MS Paint, which makes the achievement even more remarkable!

Dark Sword Miniatures, who produce some amazing “A Song of Ice and Fire” miniatures, have provided a peek at several new Tom Meier-sculpted miniatures in their George R.R. Martin Masterworks collection. These feature Hodor with Bran on his back, and the Reed siblings, Jojen and Meera (who has her frog-spear and shield). As always, Meier’s sculpting is exquisite, given how incredibly tiny these miniatures are.

This is a new one for us. Linda and I were invited by the A Podcast of Ice and Fire crew to an audio interview, which is something we’ve never done before. It was a little nerve-wracking, but Mimi, Amin, and the rest of the APoIaF hosts were fantastic! After an interview discussing the website, our history with it, the World of Ice and Fire world book we’re co-authoring with George, and more, we move on to discussing some recent news and then move on to discussing two chapters from A Game of Thrones. It was excellent fun! The APoIaF podcasts are amusing, occasionally irreverent, and filled with some interesting insights from avid fans of the series—check all the rest out!

Two corrections: I was quite wrong about House Manwoody being mentioned in the AGoT appendix. In fact, they aren’t mentioned until A Storm of Swords. However, at the time when George sent us his first set of heraldry notes (April 1999), he had been done with A Clash of Kings and was at work on ASoS, so that’s the first time we had ever heard of the house. Also, as Mimi notes, the wrestler who was the model of Shagga was named Haystacks Calhoun, not Haystacks Howard.

Maureen Ryan has broken the news that Stephen Warbeck, the Academy Award-winning composer who we reported was selected to score Game of Thrones, parted ways with the production. His replacement has already been selected, and according to Ryan’s exclusive, it’s film composer Ramin Djawadi.

A protégé of Hans Zimmer who contributed music to a number of Zimmer-scored films, including Batman Begins and Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, he has since gone on to score a few Hollywood blockbusters in his own right, including Iron Man and Clash of the Titans, while also working in television. A look at his IMDB award pages notes no really notable wins, but he has been nominated for the Emmy and Grammy awards in the recent past.

We’ve put together a playlist of some of his work, including a suite from Clash of the Titans, as well as a short interview. A German-born composer of Persian descent, his mention of a love for Iranian and Middle Eastern music is interesting, as well as his preference for the Romantic composers such as Brahms, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. A cursory glance at commentary on his work suggests the he has been, at least up to recently, very much in the Hans Zimmer mold, which might suggest that the inclusion of tracks from Gladiator in the 15 minute reel was not purely coincidental—a sign that the Game of Thrones score will be aiming at an epic, cinematic quality?

We’ve a brief comment from author Daniel Abraham regarding today’s announcement that he’ll be writing the adaption of A Song of Ice and Fire to a comic book series for Dynamite Entertainment and Bantam Books:

Abraham’s an exceptional author in his own right, with his Long Price Quartet being one of the best, under-appreciated fantasy series of the last decade, while his forthcoming The Dragon’s Path—the first in an epic fantasy series published by Orbit in the UK—is one of our most anticipated novels of 2010.

We also found that Tommy Patterson can be found on Twitter. We congratulated him and asked him what work of his he would recommend for those who’d like to see his best work to date, and here’s what he said:

Both of the comics are available at Zenescope’s store, by the looks of it. Also on Twitter, we saw that he mentioned that when he was in the running for the job, he spent quite a lot of time practicing drawing wolves, horses, and landscapes. He says he plans to get his own website up soon, which should provide ample opportunity to get more looks at his best art.

In related news, over at “Not a Blog”, George was asked about “The Mystery Knight”, the third Dunk & Egg novella published in Warriors. The previous Dunk & Egg stories were previously adapted, with art by Mike S. Miller and script by Ben Avery, and GRRM has confirmed his desire for the story to be adapted to comic form, and with the same creative choice if he has any say (and, according to him, he has quite a lot of say). Good news for fans of the further adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg!

Following this morning’s sad news that Margaret John, the actress who played Old Nan, had passed away, we have received a statement from executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss regarding the actress:

Again, our condolences to her family and friends. More tributes and obituaries can be found at Wales Online, the Daily Star, and The Guardian.

The possible announcements George hoped to make when he was in L.A. for TCA were the subject of much speculation. One of them, it seems, was GRRM’s hope that he’d have put the finishing touches to A Dance with Dragons by then, but extended illness made that impossible. As to the other? Well, that one is being announced right now as a partnership between Bantam Books and Dynamite Entertainment to begin producing a A Song of Ice and Fire comic book series! Certain details were still being worked out at the time of GRRM’s illness, we’ve been informed, and that’s why it had to be put off until now.

We’ll shortly have an additional post with comments from Daniel Abraham, but here’s GRRM’s announcement. Below you’ll find the full press release and two preliminary characters sketches featuring Tyrion and Jon Snow with Ghost.

Very sadly, we must share the news from the BBC that Margaret John has passed away at the age of 84, after a short illness. The Welsh actress was much beloved, being called a national treasure by BBC documentary makers. Her casting as Old Nan was met with excitement by fans who were quickly endeared to her after watching her teach viewers how to make Welsh cakes for St. David’s Day on a BBC Wales video.

Her voice over for the extended teaser is a memorable one, and cemented the opinion of many fans that she would make an excellent Old Nan. Our condolences to her family and he friends, especially all of those who had the honor and the pleasure to meet and work with her during the filming of HBO’s Game of Thrones:

We’ve updated our Behind the Scenes gallery with 44 new images (starting here), taken from the Buster Reeves Artisan’s video released at Making Game of Thrones a couple of weeks ago. Lots of details of fight scenes, but the image we’re highlighting here depicts a character from the books that has not previously been named: Dareon, the singer’s apprentice sent to the Wall for allegedly raping Lord Rowan’s daughter. He’s the fellow on the left.

The actor is probably more along the lines of a featured extra, and may not even have any lines, but I saw him being addressed as Dareon while I was watching some of the filming at Magheramorne (if anyone knows the actor’s full name, do let us know!. I suspect some of the other Night’s Watch recruits in the background may also be given names after some of the other recruits from the novel, such as Cuger and Halder.

In other news, expect our exclusive set reports from my visit to Belfast in October—which we started but then had to postpone to hash out some details—to resume later this month, with some exclusive pictures and details that we haven’t yet had the opportunity to report.

Although we’ve previously reported information on when Game of Thrones will premiere in Sweden via pay-cabler Canal+ (April/May is as specific as we’ve been able to get so far), we haven’t been able to remark on public broadcasts because there was very little information. Until now, that is, after Göran Danasten (SVT’s head of fiction acquisition) tweeted that he was going to be see the show (presumably its first episode or episodes) next week.

This seemed a tip-off that SVT had acquired or was in the process of acquiring the program, and further conversation with Mr. Danasten confirmed this—SVT will be airing Game of Thrones in Sweden. As to when, there are no exact dates as of yet, but we’ve been told that Canal+ has an exclusivity period, so probably no earlier than the end of 2011.

Oh, this is an excellent entry in the fantastic series of Artisan’s videos from Making Game of Thrones, as we get a great introduction to Maisie Williams, the young actress playing Arya and learn something of what it was like for her to learn how to fight with a sword for the role. Also, a few glimpses of Syrio, and what certainly looks like some rehearsal of a major scene for both characters…