Westeros

A press release from the WB Shop brought to our attention that HBO is releasing some new House of the Dragon merchandise for this year, taking inspiration from the forthcoming Lunar New Year on February 10th to dub this the “Year of the Dragon”. As you’d expect, there’s a strong dragon-focus.

We’ll point out some of the items they make a point of, after this pretty cool banner featuring Caraxes

At this year’s Primetime Creative Arts Emmys, House of the Dragon entered the show with a total of eight nominations in the category (plus a final, yet-to-be-determined, nomination in the regular Emmys for Outstanding Drama). Unfortunately, other shows—particularly HBO sibling The Last of Us—snatched away most of the prizes, but in one category the show proved victorious: Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-fi Costumes! Leading the names credited with the victory was season 1 costume designer Jany Temime, who posted about it on her Instagram:

The Primetime Emmys will air next Sunday.

Via the ever-watchful Redanian Intelligence, we learn that HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight has been pushed from a Spring to Summer 2024 production start. We reported back in October on a suspicious casting call that certainly seemed to fit the bill for casting of Dunk and Egg, and the update from RA seems to certainly confirm this as the same casting director, Lucy Bevan, is listed in the update in Production Monthly:

It’s great to see that Northern Ireland will once again host filming of matter from the Game of Thrones universe, as there are many hundreds of talented Northern Irish actors, extras, production, and craftspeople who helped bring Game of Thrones to life who’ll surely do the same for this show. Northern Ireland also has a wealth of possible filming locations.

Ser Duncan the Tall and his diminutive squire, Egg, by Gary Gianni.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has written about having watched Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, a Western animated story of revenge set in Edo Japan. We ourselves suggested fans should check it out shortly after its release when he binged it (over three days, as well, just like GRRM and Parris), suggesting that its adult nature, its bloody action, and its plotting would appeal to fans of A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones:

So, a good call from George. But he goes on past praising Blue Eye Samurai to discuss the state of possible animated successors to Game of Thrones... including the big news that the formerly-live Nine Voyages is being retooled as a possible animated series.