Westeros

Last night, an exclusive mix of VIPs, critics, and fans had the opportunity to see the world premiere of Game of Thrones. The red carpet stream, hosted by Veronica Belmont, features interviews with most of the cast who were present on the day and you can see that below:

As noted by James Hibberd, among no-shows for this event were Kit Harington and George R.R. Martin, so no interviews with them. And speaking of Hibberd, he provided some initial impressions of the episode in his post on the premiere at EW. No real spoilers here, as the attendees were all asked to only speak very generally about the episode and to save the plot turns for fans watching on the 24th. One interesting detail, though, is David Benioff’s statement about the production:

If I’m counting right, that makes a total of eight countries the show has filmed in across six season (including briefly in the U.S., Malta in the first season, and Morocco for the pilot and third season.)

As you are likely aware, at the end of S5 we were both left highly dubious of ever watching another GoT episode, both due to the sometimes abysmal quality of the show and the risk of spoilers for the books. We later said we would wait and see if The Winds of Winter would be completed before S6 and then make our final decision. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Since that became clear, we have received a lot of questions about what we mean to do regarding our coverage, as well as a lot of requests for us to continue. Some of the commentators have argued that its important to have a news/commentary source for the show that isn’t just eating up the hype and praising it no matter what. We have talked a lot about this between ourselves, taking all of this into consideration, and ultimately we have come to a decision.

Elio has no interest in watching the show.  However, I will bite the bullet, so to speak. In part because of work-related reasons, in part because I do think there’s something to be said for a more critical look at the show than other sites may be offering. That said, the coverage will change, as I do not have the time (or inclination) to make it as complete as what we did for previous years. There will unfortunately not be any recap, which was the most time-consuming part of the process. The actual review format is something I am still considering; I may do a shorter written review and a video review, or I may just do one or the other. The book-to-screen will definitely remain, but the format will change to reflect the fact that the show is passing the books for many storylines.

Finally, I am hoping to open the coverage for each episode with a new section, giving book fans a non-spoilery sense of how potentially spoilery for future books this episode may be. This will then tie into the book-to-screen where I expect more speculation regarding what may or may not be spoilery.

Liam Cunningham—who’s always a fantastic interview subject, speaking from personal experience—turned in a game, amusing interview on Conan last night. He revealed he was informed by GRRM of a secret on their first meeting that he’s kept to himself (jokingly suggesting HBO has someone ready to “take care” of him if he fails to do that). That’s then followed by a brief excerpt from a Davos scene in season 6, one which sheds new light on things glimpsed in the official trailer. Naturally, there are spoilers.

You can see the video below:

HBO has sent out a press release announcing the title of the first episode of season 6, along with a (very) brief logline giving a general sense of the chief storylines. See below, but bear in mind some might consider some of the details as spoilers:

This feels long over-due: HBO announces an after-show for season 6 of Game of Thrones, titled After the Thrones, which will feature critic and commentator Andy Greenwald (formerly of Grantland) and Chris Ryan of Grantland-succesor, The Ringer. See the press release below:

Dubbed the “March Madness” promo, this new video for season 6 features a few things already glimpsed in the official trailer, but also a few new details for fans eagerly awaiting the next season:

Interesting final frame.

Continuing the trend of highlighting the behind-the-scenes production of HBO’s Game of Thrones series, they have now released an interesting mini-documentary on the work of the prosthetics department. A whole lot of white walkers and wights to be seen. Interestingly, much of the white walker footage is from last season’s “Hardome”:

Suffice it to say, some of the glimpses of season 6 herein could be considered spoilerish.

Last month, courtesy of HBO, we were able to give an exclusive preview of one of the Histories and Lore from the Game of Thrones Season 5 Bluray set that’s to be released tomorrow. Along with that preview, we received a review copy of the set, and over the last weeks we’ve poked at its various extras to get a sense of what’s new.

On the whole, the extras this year are particularly noteworthy because of the addition of “Dance of [the] Dragons” animated feature fully 20 minutes long, featuring now-departed actors narrating in character (Harry Lloyd as Viserys, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn, Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon, Jack Gleeson as Joffrey, Pedro Pascal as Oberyn Martell, and Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon) the story of the brutal civil war that hastened the end of the Targaryen dragons. The art style for this, and the other Histories and Lore, is somewhat different from that of previous seasons. It’s cleaner in a way, but also sometimes a little more simplistic, even cartoonish, at times. The level of content is, however, quite impressive as they drew heavily from the material written for The World of Ice and Fire to provide substantial insight into the past and present of both Westeros and Essos.

Last year, Mackevision released a VFX breakdown of some of their contributions to the visually-impressive fifth season of Game of Thrones. Now another VFX company who worked on the production, Image Engine, has opened up about their work last year through an article on their site. The article includes the video you’ll see below:

The interview piece with VFX supervisor Matt Krentz—who’d worked with Look FX on two of the previous seasons—is particularly rich in additional detail. While a lot of their work as seen in the many before-and-after images seem like fairly straightforward crowd replications or removal/addition of elements, there’s also details about the 3D set extensions to Castle Black, their pipeline for creating all their work, and perhaps most notably details on creating the appearance of the “Night’s King” as seen at the end of “Hardhome”.

A Tuesday release for the trailer wasn’t anything that anyone expected, but the highly-anticipated Season 6 trailer is now out:

For fans interested in the next season, lots of digest here, including glimpses of a flashback to the fracas at the tower of joy.

A bombshell has fallen in the small world of television reviewing: HBO has stopped screeners for critics for season 6 of Game of Thrones. This is largely the result of well-publicized leaks from previous seasons—particularly the last season, in which the first four episodes were leaked weeks before the premiere—but for many critics the practice of receiving episodes early allowed them to spend more time considering and crafting their reviews. Now all the critics—at least, so far as we know—will have to write their reviews after episodes air.

There’s a brand new Game of Thrones video over at Making Game of Thrones, the official production blog for the show. Perhaps it’s because of the subject matter, but this struck me as one of the most visually beautiful of HBO’s behind-the-scenes videos looking into season 6. Also, while it’s not a trailer, it actually features a handful of pretty noteworthy details that we’ll discuss briefly below the video:

Thanks to HBO, we’re able to provide an exclusive look at one of the new Histories and Lore that will be included in the Game of Thrones Season 5 Bluray set. Listen and watch below as Ian McElhinney—the late, lamented Ser Barristan Selmy—recounts the events of Robert’s Rebellion from their nascent beginnings to their bloody end:

We’re also very happy to be able to provide the full listing of the Histories and Lore, along with all the narrators for each segment. See that below:

Here’s an interesting scoop from Entertaintment Weekly: Finn Jones, best known to Game of Thrones fans as Ser Loras Tyrell, has landed the lead role in the Marvel-Netflix series, Iron Fist. The role of Danny Rand has had a lot of debate surrounding it in various corners of the media, but it looks like the studio has pushed back against that.

For those who don’t know, the character of Iron Fist was created in the 1970s when there was a fad for martial arts in pop culture—Bruce Lee, Kung-Fu, and the like—and Marvel dutifully looked to provide what people wanted. In the comics, Iron Fist is Danny Rand, an American who ends up becoming the pupil of a mystical martial artist in the hidden city of K’un-L’un. There he learned martial arts and gained supernatural powers by placing his fists in the heart of a dragon. Born to a wealthy family, Rand is a businessman by day, hero by night, who has long associations with Luke Cage (recently seen in Jessica Jones, and soon appearing in his own series) and other heroes such as Daredevil (notably, the first season of Daredevil featured easter eggs pointing to K’un-L’un and Iron Fist), the heroic group The Defenders (the ultimate goal of Netflix being a series featuring this group), the Avengers, and more.

Almost a year ago, George R.R. Martin revealed in an Entertainment Weekly interview that he was contemplating a twist to the story of a character—and a group of characters connected with them—that he had never contemplated before and which, more notably, was something HBO’s Game of Thrones could not do because of choices the show had made that precluded it:

The fandom was abuzz with it—it sparked several threads on our forum, for one—as people puzzled over who it might be. As I recall, at the time speculation was centering on Sansa Stark because of signs that the show was going to diverge heavily from her storyline in A Song of Ice and Fire (as it indeed did). However, a brand new interview with George from IGN revisits the topic and reveals some significant new information: