Westeros

Via EW, HBO exec Casey Bloys provided some light at the end of the tunnel for eager Game of Thrones fans, indicating that the final season of the show will be airing in the first half of 2019. Given that in general the show has started airing in March or April, it seems odds are good for the final season to follow suit.

Besides that, Bloys has also clarified earlier reports sourced from the Belfast Telegraph which indicated an October date for the production of Jane Goldman’s pilot for a Game of Thrones prequel/successor show. Bloys indicated that in fact a director has not yet been found (which may put paid to the idea that Goldman’s gotten Matthew Vaughn on board) and that in fact they’re hoping to get the pilot into production early next year. How this fits into the Telegraph’s report of trying to find a window to use the Paint Hall studio facilities is unclear.

This year’s World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced, and The Book of Swords anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and the late Gardner Dozois is nominated in the anthology category. The award winners, which are juried (but include a popular component in that two finalists in each category are chosen by popular vote), will be announced during the World Fantasy Convention taking place on November 1st through 4th in Baltimore, Maryland.

For the full list of finalists in all categories, see this post over at Tor.com.

At SDCC, Random House has made a poster available featuring the Targaryen family tree that will appear in Fire and Blood, and provided a signup link for their mailing list that leads to a PDF of the same. We don’t have that handy, but what we do have is an image of the poster:

Fans have already starting poring over it, and we thought we’d comment on a couple of things that have been pointed out

San Diego Comic-Con remains a place for launching trailers for series and films, as SyFy reveals its first trailer for

Nightflyers, a science fiction horror series “from the mind of George R. R. Martin” thanks to its being a loose adaptation of his award-winning novella of the same name.

You can see the trailer below:

Cast definitely seems larger than what’s in the novella, and there’s some very different motivations for the Nightflyer’s mission, but you can pick out moments that are drawn from the original story as well. As Martin has recently stated in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, the show is not part of the broader Thousand Worlds far-future history in which the story was set, and in fact will take place within our solar system.

UPDATE: We have the Netflix trailer for the series below, and it makes some things a fair bit clearer while including a number of additional glimpses of the show.

Yesterday, the 2019 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar was published, containing art by award-winning artist John Jude Palencar.

Just before the release, Palencar shared a preview of the artwork over at the excellent Muddy Colors blog, including some initial sketches for pieces that you’ll have to get the calendar to see in finished form.

While Linda and I were in Spain for Celsius 232, George R.R. Martin was in New York City for ThrillerFest, where among other things there was an interview and Q&A (we’ve embedded the video!) with editor Anne Groell. Topics discussed include the new Nightflyers TV show from SyFY, the history of The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood, and more.

At the close of the festival, Martin was named that year’s Thriller Master, the lifetime achievement award from the International Thriller Writers association. Here’s a press release, and the video of the awards ceremony below!

An interesting set of reports from yesterday touch on HBO’s future and the future of Game of Thrones.

First, the Belfast Telegraph reports that allegedly staff at Paint Hall—the massive studio space used by Game of Thrones as its main base of operations for all of its seasons—have been told that the prequel pilot ordered back in June will begin filming this October.

Suffice it to say, if true, this is a very fast production path by HBO standards. By way of comparison, the original Game of Thrones pilot was ordered in November 2008 but filming did not begin until October 2009—almost a full year after. And Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen show had a pilot order in September, and began filming in May, eight months later.

If the Telegraph’s report is accurate, it’ll just be four months from pilot order to pilot shoot. But it’s important to stress that caveat—it’s entirely possible that October will see the beginnings of pre-production, such as set building, location scouting, and costuming, rather than actual filming. What can it mean, however, if this tight deadline really is true?

We have two thoughts on it.

Reports from over the weekend reveal that the final scenes have been filmed for Game of Thrones season 8, the final season of HBO’s hit fantasy series. It’s been an extraordinarily long shoot, beginning on October 23rd of last year, meaning just over 8 months have gone into filming the last six episodes of the show. Maisie Williams has posted a farewell image on her Instagram which has caused a bit of a stir in and of itself:

Though no air date has been announced, we do know from HBO that the show will not air until 2019.