Westeros

We had it as unconfirmed, but it’s now confirmed that the Orbit Showtime Network—leading provider of television and film by satellite to most of North Africa and the Middle East—will be carrying HBO’s Game of Thrones beginning April 20. Notably well ahead of some other markets, including major European markets! According to the release we’re linking to, it will air at 22.00 with what seems to be a repeat in the early morning at around 3.00.

We have updated our International Air Dates listing accordingly.

GRRM has given an update on the current state of A Dance with Dragons (US, UK), noting he’s finished two more short chapters (with more on the way), and that the book has now grown to just over 1600 manuscript pages. By my estimate, this means the book would—with standard font and gutters—be over 1,000 pages in length, easily making it the longest book in the series. How many more chapters left? We’re not sure, but given that he hears the biplanes approaching “Kong”, it’s looking good.

In comments, he notes a few other things, such as emphasizing the fact that most of the chapters of the manuscript are already fully edited, so it’s only the new chapters that will need work from his editors, and that the fact is that publishers can turn around a book very quickly indeed if they a mind to do it (and in this case, they do), so the July 12 date remains quite firm. Until then, here’s a blog post at Suvudu from his U.S. editor, Anne Groell, holding the completed-to-date manuscript. Now, Anne’s not tall, by any means, but that should give a pretty good idea of just how many pages there are in the book.

After the press release with two new screen shots from A Game of Thrones: Genesis, we thought there’d be news for a little while ... but we were wrong. Factornews in France, who shared the first preview with screenshots of the game, have now posted a similarly extensive preview of the real-time-strategy game.

Dark Sword Miniatures have released a flurry of new figures by Tom Meier in the George R.R. Martin Masterworks series, and these are particularly terrific: Bronn, Benjen Stark, Lysa Arryn, Maester Luwin (already previewed by GRRM), and perhaps best of all, young Robert at the Trident. George notes in his post about the new figures that more are already under way.

Publisher Focus Home Interactive have released two new screenshots from Cyanide Studio‘s forthcoming A Game of Thrones: Genesis real-time strategy game for PC. Featuring the Wall and the Eyrie, the images give more of a sense of the scale and style of the game. Also included was a promotional image by Marc Simonetti, who GRRM recently announced as the 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar artist. The full press release can be found below, while our fully gallery of available images can be found at the All Sorts of Weird Stuff gallery.

Variety has a very interesting report on film and television production in Northern Ireland which touches on HBO’s Game of Thrones, and includes some interesting facts and figures. As we’ve previously discussed, the show’s budget has always been impressive, probably in the top quintile of all of HBO’s regular hour-long dramas (Rome certainly being at the very top end), but it seems it may have been even bigger than we were led to believe.

The HBO store has been keeping itself busy, releasing more products out there. We knew that the shirts featuring the posters would be inevitable, of course. And there had been rumors of steins of sort being produced, featuring house imagery, to be released to coincide more or less with the launch of the show…

But it looks like they’re here early! The main body being either in black or white, the steins cover House Targaryen, House Stark, House Lannister, House Baratheon, House Tully, and House Greyjoy (which, for our money, looks particularly sharp!) What more does HBO have planned in the coming weeks? We shall see…

Absolutely terrific news from George at “Not a Blog”: Roy Dotrice, world record holder for his A Game of Thrones reading performance, and the very popular reader of the first three A Song of Ice and Fire audio books, is signed to read the next book, A Dance with Dragons!

As GRRM mentions, when Dotrice did not read the fourth book due to scheduling conflicts, hundreds of e-mails found their way to him asking after him and pleading for his return to the series, which helped make this possible.

Now, just to get him back on to Game of Thrones after health issues forced him to withdraw from the role of Grand Maester Pycelle at the last minute…

We’ve updated our international air dates listing now that reports are coming in from Israel that Yes! has revealed Game of Thrones will be airing April 21st, just four days after the U.S. premiere. According to a remark from Winter is Coming, this is an exceptionally fast debut for a foreign show in Israel, which is a good sign.

So far, not much more movement on many of the announced broadcasters with no solid dates, but we’re keeping an eye out. If anyone in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, or Italy could contact national cable and broadcast networks to see if they’re picking up the show and when they’ll air it, we’d be very interested in that information!

Rumors abounded of HBO preparing something very special, something that tied into the final link for the Maester’s Path, which had up to now covered four of the five senses. The last left? Taste.

According to HBO, Top Chef host and award-winning chef Tom Colicchio prepared special foods for five different regions covered in the series. Food trucks in NYC and L.A. would be going out, serving 300 portions of each dish over the course of two weeks, from the 28th to the 1st in NYC and the 4th to the 8th in L.A.. And how do you find them? You have to follow the Twitter or Facebook official pages to learn where the trucks will be each day.

Below are some additional details, an embed to a special HBO Buzz video with Chef Colicchio, as well as copies of the PDFs featuring his lemon cake(!) recipe as well as a sample menu.

It looks like Cyanide has been giving some sneak peek at the mysterious A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying game they’re creating, to go along with the A Game of Thrones: Genesis RTS that we’ve reported on previously (disclosure: Linda and I have consulted for the game at an early stage, and are involved in some of the writing for it).

Two commentaries on what has been seen have been published, one by well-known French fan Evrach at La Garde de Nuit and the other—with some images!—has been posted by Factornews. Both are in French, but Evrach and Charles-Louis de Maere of Factor has provided us English translations which can be found below:

This week, we’re pleased to be able to share our interview with Kristian Nairn, the 7’ tall, Northern Irish actor, musician, and DJ who plays the fan-favorite role of Hodor. Almost 40 minutes long, the podcast interview covers a wide range of topics. We’ll note that at a couple of points, including one early on, Kristian’s voice gets rather fuzzy because of technical issues, but bear with it and it’ll clear up.

Listen to our interview, and if you haven’t visited before, poke around the Features section for additional interviews with John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) and Finn Jones (Ser Loras Tyrell), as well as articles on various topics related to the production.

Sky has announced a contest, with the grand-prize being:

The winner will enjoy unique accommodation for a week at the Killyleagh Castle Towers as well as a trip to Castle Ward and Tollymore Forest Park which was a major location while filming the show.

Sky HD’s tweet adds that the winner gets to take along three companions. By the looks of it, you’ll need to be a subscriber to Sky with a Sky ID to be able to enter the competition, which means unfortunately that this is limited to U.K. residents. That’s going to be an amazing trip we have to say! Castle Ward was the site of much of the post-pilot Winterfell filming, while Tollymore Forest Park was used for several different locations, including the haunted forest beyond the Wall.

HBO has snuck out a new Artisans video, this one with Gorden Fitzgerald, the props master. Some new shots from various locations, including a late-AGoT scene at Castle Black, and more glimpses of the Hand’s tourney, the Dothraki encampment, and more. Embed below:

HBO has sent along the hi-resolution of some of the amazing landscapes and buildings created with visual effects magic, which at 1080p should be perfectly suited to usage as wallpapers. We’ve added them—King’s Landing, the Wall, and two Winterfell images—to the Locations section of the Game of Thrones Gallery, the most extensive collection of screen caps and other images related to the series.

Also, I had not announced this previously, but the screen caps from the House Targaryen featurette are now in the Previews gallery, starting from this image.