Westeros

After some down time, HBO’s arrangement with global events provider GES—announced in July—has come to fruition with the announcement of the first date for the re-vamped, expanded exhibition. From October 28th, a “limited engagement” (no precise details, but the exhibition website allows tickets to be ordered as far in advance as January 7) will be taking place in Barcelona’s Museu MarÃ%ADtim.

Other locations and dates will be announced in the weeks and months to come. One big difference from prior exhibitions: there’ll be a fee for entry, but this fits with the idea that it’s also on a much larger scale than previous exhibitions.

Full press release below:

News spread last night of a talk Casey Bloys, HBO’s president of programming, held at Moravian College. According to reports, Bloys indicated that in a bid to mitigate the leaks that have plagued the show the last few seasons, the producers had decided to write and film multiple endings to attempt to hide the real ending. According to the report at EW, the showrunners have previously indicated that they’re going to new heights to attempt to prevent leaks for the final season, and this seems to be just one of a number of techniques they’ll be using.

Alternate endings created to prevent leaks is not new to television, with shows as varied as 24, Lost, The Simpsons, and fellow HBO show Sex and the City having used the stratagem. As to whether these efforts will be successful when it comes to Game of Thrones? Only time will tell.

Great news for fans of George R.R. Martin’s science fiction: Nightflyers will be going to series at SyFy, although the official announcement has not been made as the deals are still being worked out regarding broadcast rights both in the U.S. and overseas.

This follows news from back in May that SyFy was noted himself, this show is based on the rights he sold many years earlier that led to a low-budget film that did not find much success (you can see the poster for that film above). GRRM has no role in the production, as he is exclusively under contract with HBO, but he’s hoping for the best and in particular hopes that the show will look as good as SyFy’s The Expanse.

Last week, Linda provided a review of the very handsome Stark fountain pen from Italian pen maker Montegrappa. That pen was one we bought ourselves, as we do admire fountain pens, but shortly after we did our review we were pleasantly surprised to receive a package straight from HBO: Montegrappa's Targaryen ballpoint pen. Naturally, we just had to review it, and I provide the honors this time around:

Yes, my handwriting is nothing to write home about! But I think that should give those interested in a pen like this a sense of what they're getting. All in all, the Montegrappa series of pens has been one of the unique and interesting Game of Thrones-licensed products. The pens are widely available, especially at HBO's own store:

We've posted a video review of one of Montegrappa's officially-licensed Game of Thrones pens. Montegrappa is a famous name in Italy, a maker of fine pens and other luxury items, and their licensing Game of Thrones has led to four (now five) beautiful pens.

The Stark pen featured above -- a fountain pen with a medium nib; other options include fine and broad nibs, or rollerball or ballpoint versions -- is one of the initial four pens which each take their inspiration from a different Great House. The fifth, and newest pen, is a high-end limited edition in solid sterling silver or even 18 karat gold, but those run anywhere from 3,200 to 52,000(!) euros.

This pen came to us by way of Amazon.com, via a Madrid-based authorized dealer named Iguana Sell (noting them down because they did an amazing job with prompt shipping and really good packaging), but you'll find most of the varieties of the pens available from a number of sellers besides them, some at even lower prices:

Of course, the HBO Store (both the US and EU varieties) also carries the pens as well, and sometimes you'll find special deals on all their Game of Thrones products.

We’ve been referring to this for a couple of months as something in the works, but Linda and I are now very happy to join in making the official announcement of the launch of Martin Studies International Network.

What’s that, you may ask? See the press release below to learn more:

The episode guide for “The Dragon and the Wolf” is now mostly up-to-date, including Linda’s video review of the episode (which we’ll embed below) as well as a book-to-screen consideration trying to piece out what’s inspired by the novels to date, what’s likely to happen in future novels, and what’s definitely not something that fits within the scopes of the books.

As Linda says in her video, there may or may not be a Season 7 overview video from her—stay tuned!

Launching just as we were in the midst of travels, we were remiss to make note of the fact that the long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “The Mystery Knight” has now been released.

Bringing back together the successful team of Ben Avery on script and Mike S. Miller on art, the graphic novel adapts the 3rd of the Dunk & Egg novellas, set about 90 years prior to the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Over at Unbound Worlds, Random House’s SF/F site, there’s an interview with Mike Miller regarding the Dunk & Egg adaptations over the years and some of the choices he’s made in the course of them.

HBO has released details for the final episode of Game of Thrones season 7: “The Dragon and the Wolf”—good title—will have a 79 minute, 43 second running time, making it the longest episode of the series to date. There are rumors that season 8’s episodes will potentially run even longer as a matter of course, but we’ll have to wait and see if that holds true.

“The Dragon and the Wolf” airs at 9PM on August 27th.

The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones season 7, “Beyond the Wall, is out, and Linda has gotten the episode guide filled with thoughts on what’s inspired by the books and what may be related to what’s to come and what definitely isn’t happening, as well as an analysis of the episode which we’re embedding below:

Thanks to all of our travel lately, some of the previous episode guides did not get their Book-to-Screen sections, but those have now been filled: “The Spoils of War” and “Eastwatch”. The latter also contains a second video in the Analysis section, looking more closely at a particular bit of information revealed in “Eastwatch”.

IGN has an interesting interview with Jane Goldman, one of the four (or five) writers working on ideas for a successor series to HBO’s Game of Thrones. In the course of the interview, Goldman’s quite cagey, but she does share just a little bit of information that provides some additional parameters for what her pitch is.

Linda and I recently published a video on our Westeros.org youtube channel regarding annulments in Westeros. This is in reaction to something on Game of Thrones—Linda explains more in the video—but suffice it to say, it contains spoilers for season 7 of the series.

(And no, still not watching myself, but I know the general gist of what’s been happening so far, which is more than enough to confirm that I made the right choice for myself.)

As previously mentioned, Linda and I decided to take some time while on our vacation to make a video discussing the Game of Thrones “successors”—the four (or five) in-development concepts that follow-ups to the show. We’ve now finished the series, deciding that three parts was more than sufficien to kick around a dozen or so potential ideas. You can find them all in the playlist embedded below:

Later than usual—still on vacation!—but the episode guide for “The Queen’s Justice” is now up, including Linda’s video review and book-to-screen analysis. You can see the video below:

While vacationing, Linda and I decided it was time to share some thoughts on the Game of Thrones successors—as GRRM calls them—that HBO and several writers are developing as a potential follow-up to the popular series. In this first video, I lay out some of the details of what we do know about the projects, and some of the parameters that help us understand what the projects aren’t.

With any luck we’ll have the next video—discussing some ideas of stories outside of Westeros that HBO may be considering—up later tonight.