Westeros
The 'A Song of Ice and Fire' Domain
News
June 2012
With filming to begin in little more than a week, the fact that actors have already been cast in a number of roles should not be a surprise. The fact that names are starting to spill, one after the other, is probably not too surprising. We’ve been sent quite a few details about a number of additional actors who’ve landed roles, some of whom will probably be familiar to anyone who watches film or television with any regularity…
Despite the fact that the production seems very shy of revealing casting news just yet, it’s not as if there hasn’t been some casting decisions made. In one case, we’ve waited several weeks in hopes that HBO would let up and provide confirmation… but as they won’t—and more power to them!—we’ll just go ahead and reveal what we know (or think we know) to date regarding one particular trio of castings on which we have details.
The San Diego Comic-con has been releasing its program details, and fairly full details regarding the Game of Thrones panel are now available:
2:45-3:45 Game of Thrones Panel and Q&A session—; Based on the bestselling fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, HBO’s Game of Thrones series concluded its 10-episode second season on June 3. Created and executive produced by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the series follows kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and noblemen as they vie for power in a land where summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime. Season 2 of the hit series told an epic story of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honor, conquest and triumph, set in an enthralling world of intrigue, seduction, and magic. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, production of season 2 also took place in Croatia and Iceland. Some of the cast featured in the second season and appearing on this panel are (in alphabetical order) Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy, Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn Stark, Kit Harington as Jon Snow, Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, and Richard Madden as Robb Stark. George R. R. Martin, who also serves as a co-executive producer and writer on the series, moderates with executive producer Carolyn Strauss. Hall H
So, now we have a list of “some” o the cast who’ll be appearing. Why “some”? I suspect some more may be added as they clarify schedules… and, given the extreme silence from HBO on casting to date, I think it’s safe to say that a “surprise” or two in terms of casting news will be revealed at the con.
HBO adds a follow-up indicating that executive producers Benioff and Weiss will not be in attendance as the season will already be filming at the time of the convention.
HBO’s press release confirming Morocco as a fourth shooting location (pretty sure that’s unprecedented for a regular hour-long series, though I suppose there may be some European television series or mini-series that have managed something similar) and no changes to the writing staff from last season also included the full list of directors involved in this new season, and there’s a mix of returning and new names that’s worth taking a closer look at.
Straight from HBO, we’ve details on the writers and directors for the next season of Game of Thrones, with filming due to begin the second week of July. It confirms our earlier reports on Morocco becoming a fourth(!) filming location.
Here’s the press release:
Season 3 of Game of Thrones will start production in early July. The production continues to be based in Belfast, Northern Ireland and will shoot in Belfast and other Northern Ireland locations. Additionally, it is confirmed that Game of Thrones will return once again to Croatia and Iceland for additional production. This season, a fourth location, Morocco, will be added to the schedule.
The following directors have been set for Season 3. They are: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Alex Graves, Michelle MacLaren, Dan Minahan, David Nutter and Alik Sakharov. Writers returning for this season are: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, George R.R. Martin and Vanessa Taylor.
Casting is underway and will be announced soon.
Based on the bestselling fantasy book series by George R.R. Martin, GAME OF THRONES is an epic drama set in the world of Westeros, where ambitious men and women of both honor and ill-repute live in a land whose summers and winters can last years. The Emmy®- and Golden Globe-winning fantasy series aired its ten-episode second season Sunday, April 1-June 3, 2012.
So, D&D will be directing an episode (or two?)... and Alik Sakharov is returning, which is excellent. Plus a female director, Michelle MacLaren, joins the mix. More details on the directors shortly!
Over at “Not a Blog”, George has posted a lengthy update on various projects, from those that are done (The Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection [Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK]) to those in-progress (such as The Winds of Winter, Dangerous Women and the fourth Dunk & Egg novella, the latest Wild Cards novel Lowball, and Old Mars), and on to those just in the planning stages (Old Venus).
One in particular might be of special interest to followers of Westeros.org, since it’s The World of Ice and Fire, the world book that we’re are co-authoring with George. Here’s what George has to say:
Speaking of that last stuff… yeah, there’s some really neat details in there, and perhaps a new mystery or two for fans to ponder. Some fans have long wondered just how Aegon’s Conquest was carried out, how the Vale of Arryn fell under their control, the status of Dorne in that time, even the order in which the Targaryens conquered each region… well, they’ll be wondering no more, on those topics, and quite a few others!
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Over at George R.R. Martin’s Not a Blog, GRRM notes that he’s supporting a charity drive to support the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary—a non-profit organization that takes in and shelters abused or abandoned captive-bred wolves. To assist the sanctuary in its fund-raising efforts, Martin has donated 40 first edition hardcovers of A Dance with Dragons, which will come autographed and personally inscribed for the first 40 people to donate $100 or more to the charity. As he notes, the swelling attendance of his signing events has made personal inscriptions much less common than they once were.
Besides that, there’s also a chapbook available for those who donate $10, which he’ll sign (but not inscribe).
As George says, it’s all in a good cause, so please consider donating!
Over at Corona Coming Attractions, a multi-part round-table is being published concerning Game of Thrones in its second season. It’s quite lengthy (in part because, well, I’m one of those who are part of the round-table and you all know how verbose I am!), but I think there’s some good points raised by quite a few people.
Other participants include Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post, Amin Javadi from the Podcast of Ice and Fire, James Poniewozik from TIME, writer and Wired contributor David Barr Kirtley, author and editor Doug Cohen, and of course the host of the roundtable, writer Marc N. Kleinhenz.
Posting this later than originally intended, but Midsummer and Euro 2012 suggest that it’s in fact a fine time to share a rather long (and rambling, in some cases—future videos will try and be a bit more organized!) video discussing the Kingsguard knights in the reign of Aerys II Targaryen, also known as the Mad King. This and many other videos can be found at our Youtube channel!
Note that if you’ve not read the books, there are spoilers—namely concerning the third novel, A Storm of Swords, but also touching on A Dance with Dragons.
As we reported last week, we now know that director David Nutter is set to direct the final two episodes of season 3 with the help of cinematographer Robert McLachlan. The article in which this news was revealed indicated that Morocco was going to be a filming location for the third season. We cast some doubts on it, but couldn’t rule it out…
But now this lengthy piece about McLachlan and his involvement in the series goes a step further and provides us a direct quote:
So, there you go. Season 3 seems set to use Morocco for exterior locations, and perhaps some interiors as well, according to McLachlan. That’s almost certainly all for Daenerys’s storyline in that season and, presumably, the prospective season 4. As to no Iceland in those last two episodes, this tells us that they’ll be done using Iceland before that once things have shifted back to the area around the Wall.
Read the whole article while you’re at it, as it discusses the scope of the production and many other aspects of the film and television industry.
No, no, not any more of that Bush beheading business. This is much funnier: political attack ads from the Seven Kingdoms, courtesy of Mother Jones. Funny stuff!
We heard this news first awhile ago from Eastercon, but now Gollancz has sent out a press release describing their plan to republish the first three Wild Cards books in the UK, as well as the five “new generation” novels. Wild Cards is the longest-running shared world book, featuring more realistic, grounded depictions of heroes within a single continuity. It’s something of an alternate history of the world, if a virus that wiped out tens of thousands, left many thousands more as “jokers” with useless powers and/or terrible deformations, and left a few (a lucky few) with superhuman abilities right after the end of WWII. Wild Cards, the first novel, was recently re-released with a couple of new stories added in, and it’s definitely well worth the read.
Here’s the press release:
Via HBO, we’ve learned that there’ll be a Game of Thrones panel this year at San Diego Comic-Con International, just like last year… but unlike last year, it’ll be in the huge Hall H which has a capacity of some 6,500. As James Hibberd notes, Hall H has generally been reserved for big movies or huge TV shows (ala Lost), so the presence of Game of Thrones as one of three TV shows featured in Hall H this year (Fringe and The Big Bang Theory are the other two) shows that the organizers believe that the show has a great deal of interest (as it does). Even True Blood doesn’t get that level of interest from SDCC—it’s in the spacious-but-no-as-large Ballroom 20.
The panel is scheduled for July 13th, the second day of the convention. No details yet on who’ll be part of the panel, other than a remark from GRRM that he’s adjusting his schedule to be able to make an appearance at HBO’s request. We expect we’ll be hearing more details soon.
June 26th will see the release of Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: US, UK), a collection of essays from a wide range of writers (including Linda and I!) on all sorts of aspects of the series.
Some really great essays from Alyssa Rosenberg, Gary Westfahl, Jesse Scoble, Adam Whitehead, Myke Cole, and more, and there’s also a foreword from R.A. Salvatore.
The first couple of paragraphs from all the contributors essays are available at the official site for the book. If you want more of an excerpt, a free PDF excerpt will be made available if you sign up for the Smart Pop Newsletter via the above site. The editor, James Lowder, also has an read on >>
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The very popular SF/F web video series, Sword and Laser, will have a kind of “A Song of Ice and Fire” double-header this Friday. They’ll be talking to Professor Henry O. Jacoby, editor of Game of Thrones and Philosophy (Order: US Paperback, US Kindle, UK) . And then, of course, they’ll also be speaking with George R.R. Martin about the Game of Thrones, “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and more.
You can find the episode some time this Friday, posted at the official Sword and Laser site, as well as Sword and Laser‘s page at Geek and Sundry or the Sword and Laser Youtube Channel. Note that presently they feature an interview and extended interview with James S.A. Corey—aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who may be better known to fans as George R.R. Martin’s assistant)—regarding his/their book, Leviathan Wakes.
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Although the number of “A Song of Ice and Fire” and Game of Thrones-related songs and videos have increased ten fold over the last year, we haven’t had too much time to share any of them… but this one, sent our way by Adam Whitehead, caught our attention. Based on Wiz Khalifa’s hit “Black and Yellow”, this one rather amusingly spins it as a song about the Baratheon brothers. It’s charming and, hey, lots of references to details in the books (“Lightbringer!” “Rainbow Guard!):
Good fun!
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We’ve just learned that A Dance with Dragons—the fifth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series—has been announced as the winner of the 2012 Locus Award for Best Novel. Presented each year, the Locus Awards are administered by Locus Magazine, the foremost SF/F publishing trade magazine. The yearly Locus Poll—open to everyone, although submissions by current subscribers are weighted—has been very kind to the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, with every novel taking first place with the exception of A Feast for Crows (which was #2 in the poll, just behind that year’s winner, Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys).
Congratulations to GRRM and, indeed, all the winners of this year’s Locus Awards! For those who are curious, China Mieville’s Embassytown took Best SF Novel, while Catherine Valente scored wins in three separate categories (YA, novelette, and novella). The full list of finalists can be found at here, while we’ll update when the official and complete results are available online.
UPDATE: The full list of winners and finalists can be found here.
... sort of.
Following up the late evening mea culpa over a shockingly controversial non-story that took the entirety of three months to crack wide open (it’s hard being a journalist, you know, when you’ve got to make the stories yourself), HBO seems to have decided to go even further: according to the AV Club, HBO is apparently having the head removed or replaced on the DVD and Bluray ... but they’re also pulling the episode from HBO On Demand, HBO Go, and even iTunes. So, yeah, it’s going to be really hard to find it soon enough.
But, you know? That also means that the unadulterated, as-meant-to-be-aired final episode will never be seen again on HBO. That includes future Blurays and DVDs…. but there’s still the current run available at fine retailers the world over. Best get these before they go the way of the original Star Wars trilogy. You can order them at Amazon.com while supplies last: US DVD, US Bluray, UK DVD, and UK Bluray.
We’ve now posted our even-longer second half of our overview of Game of Thrones, sharing our views on what we liked, what we disliked, and our hopes for the next season or two. You can find it over at the Features page or, alternatively, view it (and many other videos besides) at our Youtube channel.
A sudden and perhaps not unexpected flurry of media interest in a passing DVD commentary remark made by executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss—that’d be for the Bluray and DVD released back in March—has led to a response from both HBO and Benioff & Weiss.
We’ve been posting various video reviews of the series (plus other, A Song of Ice and Fire-related stuff) this year, and now that season 2 is done, Linda and I decided to look back over the season, perhaps re-evaluating some of our early thoughts, and basically explaining in more detail our views on it, pointing out the bits we loved and (sadly) the bits we didn’t. There’s more, including some thoughts regarding the structure of the series, appreciation for some of the tremendous acting and directing, and our hopes for the next season.
It turned out quite long, so we’ve recorded it in two parts. Second part should be up tomorrow or Friday.
You can watch the video at our Feature page, or go directly to our channel. Enjoy!
A little bit of season 3 news is dribbling out in fits and starts, and this time we’ve a bit of news regarding directors for season 3. Contrary to an earlier interview, director and co-executive producer Alan Taylor—who directed “The Prince of Winterfell” and “Valar Morghulis” this season—will not be returning to direct for season 3.
Before “Valar Morghulis” aired, I had the chance to interview Alfie Allen about his role as Theon Greyjoy, his character’s arc, the pranks that a certain pair of executive producers love to pull, and more.
Alfie’s story this season has been one of the highlihghts of season 2, something which I told him and which, as you’ll see, he was quite pleased to hear!
Via George’s “Not a Blog”, we’ve learned that three of his novels will be recorded as audiobooks, each of them read by a different actor from HBO’s Game of Thrones. The three books and their respective actors are:
Alyssa Rosenberg, one of the more interesting commentators on HBO’s Game of Thrones, has a great interview with Bryan Cogman (who we’ve interviewed this season) discussing a lot of what goes into the adaptation. Rosenberg touches on some of the topics and concerns that fans have expressed (ourselves included) after this season finale, and Bryan provides cogent answers. Many of them are very much in line with things I’m not bothered by—compression, moving some things around, budget issues, and so on.
Very much worth reading, as Cogman—who, however much he hates it, is indeed the “keeper of the mythos”—is as big a fan of the material as anyone, and is at hand when decisions are made by the showrunners.
We’ve only had one or two outside of contributions this year to our features section, so it was with great pleasure when Miodrag Zarković—a television critic for Serbia’s popular weekly magazine Pečat—contacted us and offered a lengthy consideration on the series to date, in English for an English-speaking audience. Bringing his knowledge of television and literature to bear, as well as his appreciation of the source material, Mr. Zarković shares his views with the readers of Westeros.org in an article titled, “An Adaptation Without Honor, or Adaptation Morghulis - This One’s Dead Already”.
As you can guess, he wasn’t a fan.
His trenchant commentary is not going to appeal to everyone, and there are points we ourselves would happily argue with him about, but his observations come from the heart, are built on a grounding in literary and television history that not everyone has, and some of the points raised seem very hard to argue with. In any case, it is an opinion we felt worth sharing with readers, to provide one unique, thought-provoking perspective from which to consider the adaptation.
(It goes without saying that should a fellow critic or television writer offer up a response or rebuttal, we would be pleased to link to it, or even to publish it on our site!)
The last days, you may have noticed that Westeros.org has been down quite often. That’s because the server just couldn’t handle the amount of load being placed on it. Well, that’s a thing of the past (unless we see exponential levels of growth): the whole of Westeros.org and all of its parts (the Wiki of Ice and Fire, the Forum of Ice and Fire, Blood of Dragons MUSH) is now housed on the same, very capable server. This should mean that the extensive downtimes and great amounts of lag should be a thing of the past (*knocks on wood*).
Many thanks to the community who contributed to help make it possible, and of course to our amazing host, Sparks, who did all the heavy-lifting of getting things together!
Due to severe technical difficulties, posting has been and will be intermittent until we figure out what’s going on and/or move the website to the new server that now hosts the A Song of Ice and Fire forum and the Wiki of Ice and Fire. We’ve posted our lengthy Valar Morghulis coverage, but wanted to catch up with a number of things that have gone on since:
First, apologies for the delay in posting our coverage of “Valar Morghulis”—you have probably noticed that the server has been almost entirely unavailable the last days, and we had similar issues with the server that hosted the forum and wiki, and that occupied… well, way too much of our time. The good news is that we’ve moved the latter server to a much faster box… and we’ll be shifting the website over to that server as well, in time (perhaps even this week), which should vastly improve speed and reliability of the site.
So, in any case, our coverage is up! Check it out and let us know what you think. We’ll be getting our extra video up tomorrow some time, with any luck, but you’ll find our Thronecast appearance (which features a bit more of us than usual—make sure to watch through the end!) and my appearance on the Talking TV podcast embedded in the Extras section.
The HBO Shop has a tremendous range of Game of Thrones items, from clothing to posters and more… but they want to know what you would like to see next.
In partnership with them, we’re running a contest here in our comments. All you need to do to enter? Suggest new merchandise that you’d like to see the HBO Shop offer. Personally, I’m still waiting for the his-and-hers Khal and Khaleesi cologne and perfume set…
Just comment below with your suggestions. I should note that the competition is US only (sorry, that’s the rules), so bear that in mind—I’m sure HBO would love to hear suggestions from everyone, but the two prizes for two lucky winners—a Targaryen hat and the Game of Thrones letter opener—will only be available to fans in the US.
Please, do try and be serious in your suggestions… and good luck!
Three interesting sets of articles about George R.R. Martin have surfaced in the last couple of days. We’ve added them to the So Spake Martin collection, of course, but for convenience here’s the direct links to the three pieces:
- Rolling Stone profiles GRRM at MisCon.
- The Financial Times has lunch with GRRM, discusses the books, sexposition in Game of Thrones, and more.
- Sports Illustrated talks football with George. Ser Bonifer the Good = Tim Tebow!
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Just two more days until “Valar Morghulis” brings the season to an end, and HBO has released five stills from the final episode. You can see them at the bottom of the episode page... but in honor of the fact that I interviewed Alfie Allen a bit earlier today, here’s an image of him in Winterfell looking crazily fierce… or perhaps fiercely crazy might be more accurate:
Empire Magazine has a great interview with director Nial Marshall, who directed the fantastic “Blackwater”. Lots of juicy details about directing the episode and crafting some of its moments. And at least one bit that, I suspect, will be controversial in some quarters of the fandom regarding instructions he says he received from an unnamed executive producer…