Westeros

Thanks to a tip, we’ve found this article by Freya Gígja Gunnarsson of the Icelandic paper, Fréttablaðið, in which she reports on a visit to the set near Svínafell glacier where they were able to watch Kit Harington and talk to some of the production crew. And as a treat, the article gives us our first look at Jon Snow‘s costume for Season 2, and a separate video report with more shots of Harington, and snippets from Benioff & Weiss. The report starts at the 1 minute mark.

Hard on the heels of EW’s exclusive details from the DVD and Bluray sets, the HBO Store has come out swinging with an exclusive to bring pre-orders straight to them.

According to the official Game of Thrones Twitter and Facebook accounts, pre-orders at the HBO store for the DVD and BluRay season 1 sets will come with an HBO Store-exclusive additional disc, “Creating the World of Westeros”, which should provide more behind-the-scenes looks at the production’s bringing the world of A Song of Ice and Fire to life.

Alas, the HBO Store is US-only, and the HBO UK store doesn’t even list the DVDs and BluRays yet. You can of course preorders for the DVDand Blu-Ray sets at Amazon.com and others retailers, but they won’t include the exclusive disc.

Decisions, decisions….

Now that word’s been going around regarding the DVD and Blu-Ray set, EW’s come in with some exclusive details, images, and even a video.

The biggest news is that the prospective release date is a couple of weeks earlier than previously speculated: March 6th. At a guess, this more strongly supports the idea that the premiere of the 2nd season is in the first half of April (Luck wraps its 9-episode season on March 25th, so theoretically Game of Thrones could air as early as April 1st). Best to mark that calendar (and get those pre-orders in, as we suspect the show will be #1 with a bullet at Amazon and other retailers, and who knows if supply will meet demand in the initial rush). Besides that, James Hibberd provides some excellent looks at original art and storyboards for the production.

The comic book adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones continues, with issue #3 hitting shelves tomorrow. With art by Tommy F. Patterson and script by Daniel Abraham, it’s one of the most faithful adaptations from book to comic that we’ve seen. Well worth checking out!

If you’re not sure where your nearest comic shop is, the Comic Shop Locator is a handy service.

Thanks to Volokh Online, we’ve come across this podcast—part of a series by the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University—discussing the topic of liberty as expressed in A Song of Ice and Fire. The main speaker is Amber Taylor, a writer for The Atlantic. Some very interesting topics brought up in the course of the discussion, especially in regards to Sansa and Daenerys.

For those who aren’t fond of listening in to podcasts, a transcript can be found further down the page.

James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly has now published a two-page article on his set visit to Croatia a couple of months ago, where filming was going on for scenes set in King’s Landing as well as in the exotic city of Qarth. Several photos illustrate the piece, including a depiction of Fort Lovrijenac which served as a setting for King’s Landing scenes, and two photos from the Qarth set.

One depicts a line of Qartheen guards with spears and shields, and robed figures behind them, and feature the walls of Qarth which we’ve glimpsed previously.  The other photo, on the second page, is interesting in that it depicts a horse carrying three baskets or cages (two of them visible) which Hibberd identifies as being where Daenerys Targaryen keeps her three, newly-hatched dragons when she and the Dothraki are travelling.

Hibberd promises more exclusives in the coming months, so be sure to keep an eye out on EW’s Inside TV for future reports.

Amazon.de, the German arm of the retail giant, has provided fans the first glimpse of the packaging for HBO’s boxset of the first season of Game of Thrones, which will be available in the U.S. on March 20th in both DVD and Blu-ray editions.

It’s certainly a pretty handsome box-set, and it looks to be quite feature-filled. The best part is that the bonus features can be seen, and suffice it to say, there’s plenty. Here’s a run-down:

Last week, Tor.com announced that four of the Wild Cards novels will be available for just $2.99 each in e-book editions available in the US.. Wild Cards is the oldest, still-active original shared world setting, created by George R.R. Martin and a number of fellow authors. Detailing an alternate history where an alien virus led to mass casualties, disfigurement, and a handful of individuals with superhuman abilities, the Wild Cards universe has seen 21 novels (a 22nd due next year), comic books, and roleplaying games, while being a playground for authors as varied as Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, Carrie Vaughn, Melinda Snodgrass, and of course George R.R. Martin.

The four books that are part of the offer are the re-issue of the book that started it all, Wild Cards, and then the three novels of the “new generation” trilogy: Inside Straight, Busted Flush, and Suicide Kings. Again, to take advantage of these prices, you’ll have to be in the U.S.—Amazon members with foreign addresses will see the regular prices; possibly other stores may show the $2.99 price, depending on their policies.

The new trilogy’s a good read, while Wild Cards I is something of a classic in superhero fiction, introducing a range of memorable characters marked by an unusually realistic approach to dealing with their lives and travails.

Fantasy Flight Games has released the second edition of its highly-regarded Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Amazon: US, UK). Ranking in the top 100 games at Board Game Geek (which lists and rates over 50,000 board games), it’s one of the earliest licensed products based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, being almost a decade old at this time.

The new edition presents revised and clarified rules, incorporates a number of popular elements from the two expansions released for the original edition, and more. For more details about the game, check out FFG’s official page.

Entertainment Weekly‘s James Hibberd has revealed through a tweet that he spent time on the set of Game of Thrones when filming was going on in Dubrovnik. In the tweet, he coyly refers to an outdoorsy, pet-owning girl he met while travelling… and he shared a photo of himself posing with Emilia Clarke in costume as Daenerys Targaryen.

What interests us most is the background, however, which is our first glimpse at one of the sets built to represent the fabled city of Qarth.

The good folks at A Podcast of Ice and Fire have released a brand new episode after a two month hiatus, discussing various topics including GRRM signing a copy of Tuf Voyaging for Mimi, their views on A Dance with Dragons several months on, and more. And, about the 45 minute mark, they called me out of the blue and we chatted a bit more about the novels and the TV show.

It’s worth checking out, as is their extensive archive of prior episodes.

It’s the final round of the GoodReads Choice Awards!

A Dance with Dragons has survived the expansion of the field to twenty books and its collapse down to ten, final novels…. and not just in the Best Fantasy category, as it also remains in the overall Favorite Book category as well. And, as a cherry on the top, Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (aka GRRM’s assistant Ty Franck and author Daniel Abraham) is up for Best Science Fiction.

As we did last season, we’re going to try and keep a (relatively) up to date screencap gallery as the first official videos start coming out, and Linda and I will try to add some useful commentary along the way touching on details that seem to be from the books and those that seem to differ, highlighting particular actors, and more.

First up, following the In Production video that just aired, we have thirty images—including our very first looks at Stannis, Melisandre, Davos, Margaery, and Maester Cressen, as well as some new locations such as Dragonstone and the Iron Islands. They can be found starting here, beginning with the shot of the slate from the fourth episode of the second season.

Note that there are references to A Clash of Kings in many of the comments, so beware of spoilers.

The in-production, behind the scenes video has now aired, and HBO has it available online! Check it out, comments (and screencaps a bit later!)

Via HBO, we’ve just learned that on November 20th, the first “in-production” behind the scenes look at Game of Thrones season 2 will air just before Boardwalk Empire (which airs at 9PM Eastern).

HBO promises that there will be never-before-seen footage (not too hard, there not having been any footage to date!) and our first look at some of the new characters and actors that populate this season. Best of all, for those without HBO, the footage will shortly afterward go up on Making Game of Thrones, the official production blog for the TV series.

An early Christmas present, clearly—I had thought we’d have to wait until the end of Boardwalk Empire‘s latest season before we’d get such footage. Most excellent!

Just a quick note to share with fans in the vicinity of Philcon 2011, a long-running science fiction convention running through Sunday in Crown Hill, New Jersey. On Saturday at 7 PM, there’ll be a panel dedicated to A Song of Ice and Fire, moderated by the excellent Dave Axler (a friend of GRRM and Parris, and of the Brotherhood without Banners). The program description (not written by Dave, he notes) states, “This his series, now up to five books, has also spawned a hit HBO mini-series. What is so special about Martin’s work? Is it the “new Dune”?”

Having been to a couple of conventions in the past, I can recommend them as an excellent way to talk about genre works, meet authors and editors and fellow fans, and more. More details about the convention can be found at its website.

The Goodreads Choice Awards have finished their first round of voting, so now’s the time to vote in round two. Just like last time, there’s a lot of interesting books in a number of categories. A Dance with Dragons has made the short list in both the “Best Book” and the “Best Fantasy Book” categories. Again, we should also note that George R.R. Martin’s assistant—Ty Franck—has the book he co-wrote with Daniel Abraham, Leviathan Wakes (written as James S.A. Corey), up in the “Best Science Fiction” category.

If you’re a Goodreads member (or are planning to join), give it a look, and vote for your favorite books of the past year!

Award-winning artist Justin Sweet has an exhibition of his work that opened on the 5th but is running through the 28th, at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California. A number of his works—sketches, fantasy paintings featuring Robert E. Howard’s Conan and Kull, and more—are on display and on sale…

And among them is this rather terrific painting of Jon Snow and Ghost. Price? “Inquire”. (That probably means, “Expensive”.)

Unless I’m mistaken, I believe this is one of a number of paintings that Sweet has created for The World of Ice and Fire, which we’re writing with GRRM for Bantam with a prospective release some time next year.

If you’re a fan of fantasy art and are in the area, the gallery exhibition might be an excellent trip to make, if for no other reason than to get a closer look at that painting.

Via a quick, and utterly unmysterious post, GRRM has revealed who has been cast as the wildling raider known as the Lord of Bones, more commonly mocked as Rattleshirt: Edward Dogliani.

Rattleshirt is one of the chief wildling raiders at the time of the novels, having taken the name of Lord of Bones from the bone-armor he wears (including a helmet made from a giant’s skull). In the novels, he’s described as shorter and scrawnier than his armor makes him, and has an ill-favored look to him. Suffice it to say, he’ll be an antagonist for a certain popular character as the story goes forward.

Dogliani’s CV and a few headshots can be found at the agency website where he’s represented, Marcus and McCrimmon.

It’s been a little quiet on the A Song of Ice and Fire front from Dark Sword Miniatures, but their latest update includes something they describe as a surprise for GRRM… and, boy howdy, it must be a real surprise. The legendary sculptor Tom Meier has been at work on this stunning new miniature of Ser Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers, in his tournament armor.

Unlike the previous Ser Loras miniature, this one will be sold as a 54mm figure, something that only two or three of the earlier miniatures have had the benefit of (the other two were Merei’s gorgeous Daenerys and the 54mm version of his Tyrion). The Knight of Flowers is also the only character besides Daenerys to receive a second figure, I believe.

According to Jim at Dark Sword, this Loras is the culmination of 160 hours of work, the longest that Meier has ever worked on a single piece. That cloak made out of forget-me-knots is simply amazing, especially when you consider the fact that the figure is about 2 inches tall.

For those who’ve been keeping an eye on Valyrian Steel—the only official producer of replica weapons based on A Song of Ice and Fire, with direct input from George R.R. Martin—their latest creation, King Robert’s warhammer, is finally up for pre-order. It’s a massive thing, and there’s a nicely illustrative video that gives a sense of how hefty it is and what sort of damage it could do (note: no, you shouldn’t actually use this to hit anyone!)

Besides the warhammer, they’ve created Longclaw and Needle, as well as Ice (including an extremely limited “Damascus” version). I believe their future plans include Khal Drogo’s arakh, an obsidian dagger, and more.

Since our last report about actor and singer Guðmundur Ingi Þorvaldsson having auditioned for a role for the next two seasons, some more details about the shooting in Iceland has appeared.

The latest update from HBO’s Making Game of Thrones site and production assistant Cat Taylor, is an interview with stand-in and trainee Assistant Director Graeme Livingston. It’s brief, but it does contain a couple of quite interesting bits:

• Strangest Moment on Set: “Talking at length about the Star Wars movies with another AD and the conversation being picked up by the director Neil Marshall and his First AD Gerry Gavigan, who actually worked on the original Star Wars. Surreal!”
• A Hint About Season 2: “There’s been quite a lot of sword fighting in this season, a lot more than last one. There’s a lot more combat. Anything with a sword fight keeps me happy. And a bit of blood.”

Unless I’m mistaken, Gavigan has not been involved in the first season of the show. I’m guessing he may have been brought in specifically by director Neil Marshall. Looking at his very extensive AD credits—going back almost 40 years, including (yes) the original Star Wars film—it looks like we’ve even more reason to expect something special out of the Marshall-directed, George R.R. Martin-written penultimate episode, “Blackwater”.

As to sword fights? We know a few people who will be quite pleased about that.

The first hint of this was when AKA_Qthulhu tweeted that Dark Horse was being provided as the source of a number of new Game of Thrones items, according to Big Bad Toystore, which led to my asking HBO... and they confirmed, and said a press-release would be out within the week.

And don’t you know it? Here it is:

Via a tweet from thremnir, we’ve come across this article from August which seems to have slipped under the radar. A good part of it concerns Icelandic actor and musician Guðmundur Ingi Þorvaldsson (some photos and information on his blog).

Hot on the heels of the USA Today report that revealed details of the browser-based MMORPG and social game, the publisher of Cyanide‘s official Game of Thrones RPG has sent out a press release and unveiled the (sparse) official site for the game.

Here’s the press release below:

Goodreads, the massive social book site, is running their annual Choice Awards, and wouldn’t you know it? A Dance with Dragons is on the shortlist, not just in Best Fantasy but also the overall Favorite Book of 2011 category. Many other fine works are on both lists, so checking it out (and voting!) is certainly a good idea if you want to support your favorite books of the last year.

As an aside, GRRM’s assistant Ty Franck and writer Daniel Abraham, who together write as James S.A. Corey, are also up for an award in the Best Science Fiction category with the novel Leviathan Wakes. Congratulations to the both of them—it’s well-deserved for a book that’s been quite well reviewed indeed.

As previously reported, the publishers of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire in the UK, Voyager, have finally gotten into a position where they can re-release the first four novels of the series in matching hard-covers. This is the first time that the novels have been made available in hardcover since their initial releases (my understanding is that the first edition of the A Game of Thrones hardcover is very valuable, in part due to this fact).

You can order A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings presently, with A Storm of Swords (in one volume, no less!) and A Feast for Crows due in December.

We’ve previously reported on the hints and news related to various games in production based on HBO’s Game of Thrones, but some clear details have finally come out thanks to this report from USA Today.

Thanks to a tweet from HBO UK, we realized that quite a few things have been added to the HBO Store in the last weeks, items prominently featured on our store page for fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Some hoodies have turned up—I guess this is the right season for them—and there’s quite a few collectables, from house posters to shot glasses(!) and now what strikes me as the coolest of them all, a dragon egg paperweight that looks rather cool.

HBO’s finally listing the Bluray and DVD as well, though without any box art or release information. We’ll be keeping an eye on that, to say the least. (And before you ask, the US HBO Store remains US-only so far—sorry!)

We’ve no idea whether any will actually show up on camera, but according to production assistant (and Making Game of Thrones writer) Cat Taylor, there’ll be a number of Game of Thrones actors at the MTV European Music Awards. The EMAs don’t seem to be airing in the U.S., from what I can see, but the red (actually, rather more pink) carpet pre-show is airing right now, and apparently Alfie Allen and Oona Chaplin were on the carpet a bit ago; Chaplin had recently tweeted that she was out shopping for clothes for the event, in fact.

Just yesterday, several of the young actors—Aimee Richardson (Myrcella Baratheon), Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran Stark), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), and Art Parkinson (Rickon Stark) tweeted that they were hanging out with members of Snow Patrol (who happen to hail from Northern Ireland), as apparently they shared a hotel with the actors. Apparently, quite a few other performers were staying at the hotel, as the kids tweeted that they were spotting more stars.

Besides their brush with Snow Patrol and other musicians, one wonders if there’ll be some sort of official presence of actors—perhaps as presenters?—during the EMAs. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The latest update at HBO’s Making Game of Thrones site isn’t contemporaneous—the filming it’s referring to happened back in September or early October—but it’s a nice look into the filming of the penultimate episode, “Blackwater”, directed by Neil Marshall and scripted by George R.R. Martin.

Via Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned that Marvel Comics—famously stingy with its back catalog of trades, apparently due to Scrooge-like marching orders from CEO Isaac Perlmutter—is letting a large catalog of trade paperbacks go out of print. That means that for the foreseeable future, no more trades will be in print, limiting supply to what’s currently out there.

On the list of titles to go OOP? The Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword, the Ben Avery and Mike S. Miller adaptation of Martin’s second Dunk & Egg novella, “The Sworn Sword”. As Bleeding Cool notes, Marvel’s habit of letting titles go out of print means that in many cases, the titles may eventually sell for many times the original retail price… so now may be a good time to get a hold of the comic, if you’re at all interested. “As New” copies of the first graphic novel, which is out of print, are being listed starting from $95, so who knows where this book will go after major resellers run out of copies. With increasing interest in Martin’s work thanks to the TV show, and the occasional fan hope that the Dunk & Egg stories might end up being optioned by HBO as between-season miniseries or HBO Go-exclusive original content, it’s probably a good time to buy.

The word’s been getting aroundthat the Northern Irish leg of filming for the second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones will wrap around November 18th, which is an earlier wrap date than last year. All in all, it sounds like filming has largely gone off without a hitch, excluding the gale that led to some minor injuries and delayed filming of scenes involving Renly Baratheon and his camp until a later date.

Subterranean Press reports that they’ll begin taking pre-orders of A Dance with Dragons from next week. Those who’ve purchased A Feast for Crows previously had first shot at pre-ordering, and it looks like “a handful” of the deluxe limited lettered editions and about 80 of the numbered editions remain. Dance‘s art comes by way of artist Marc Fishman, who has continued to post illustrations and paintings from the book to his gallery (including one as recently as yesterday); note that the illustrations can be rather spoilerish, and in some cases may be considered marginally not safe for work.

According to Subterranean, they’ll hold a lottery for the remaining lettered editions, as demand will certainly outstrip supply. As a further update, it looks like some more book design work is left, plus a final proof, and then it’s off to the printers. With that, they’ll start turning their eyes towards their own limited edition of A Game of Thrones to be illustrated by Ted Nasmith.

During the weekend, news broke that SyFy Films (a joint venture of the SyFy Channel and Universal Studios) and had optioned theatrical and television rights to Wild Cards, the original shared-world superhero series concocted by George R.R. Martin and the Wild Cards Consortium of writers. We’ve done some digging, and we have a handful of additional details to share.

According to a press release, the second issue of Dynamite‘s George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones has sold out and has immediately gone into a second printing. This repeats the feat of the first issue, and given anedoctal reports, shows the high level of interest in the series.

Comic book fans and store owners have both noted via Twitter and Facebook that shops have been selling out, leaving some fans without any copies, so it looks like Dynamite has its work cut out for it when it comes to matching supply to demand. A few copies of various variant overs can be found, marked as high as $75, which either shows just how sought-after the comics are… or, perhaps, how avaracious comic book sellers can be; only time will tell!

For those who’d rather not bother with single issues, Bantam will be packaging the first six issues into the first volume of a graphic novel adaptation—presently the first novel is intended to be covered in twenty four issues, so that’ll be four collections over approximately two years.

G4, the gaming television channel, has jumped on-board with Game of Thrones mania. On Monday, their X-Play program featured a comedic spoof of the show, using various popular video game characters (e.g. Link and Zelda—or maybe his sister Aryll?—as incestuous Lannister-types). If you’re a fan of such spoofs, and somewhat broad comedy, it’s worth a watch.

(Favorite bit? The delivery of a message… by an Angry Bird.)