Westeros

Serbian journalist Miodrag Zarkovic, who some may know from his critical articles and essays on Game of Thrones, has started a new project: documentary filmmaking. On his new site, Internet Remembers, Zarkovic has released the trailer for the first documentary under that banner. Titled Fair Game, Zarkovic examines the collision of the Internet with cultural phenomena Game of Thrones, with an eye toward the critical landscape around it. In the course of this, he interviews professors, journalists, entertainment lawyers… and, as it happens, one website owner by the name of Elio GarcÃ%ADa.

Here’s the trailer for Fair Game, which is due to be released in the coming months via Vimeo:

More information when we have it, but those who are intrigued by the project have the option of donating financially to Internet Remembers, to help fund this and other, future projects!

Well, it seems HBO managed to provide quite a surprise in the first episode. When we closed the poll on Friday (as rumors of a leak started to surface), no one had correctly guessed any of the three characters—Doran Martell, Trystane Martell and Areo Hotah—who meet their end in the season opener. We’re not the least surprised that no one guessed Doran or Areo, though admittedly Trystane might more easily have been seen as being in danger, albeit from Cersei rather than his cousins.

So, for the first week, there is no winner. But, never fear, there’s nine weeks to go and plenty of characters available to kill. For the second episode, please like Westeros on Facebook and make your guess (one per person!) as a comment on this post. From those who get it right, we will randomly select a winner who will have a choice between one of the new Funko Dorbz figures (not yet out, but the first wave will include Daenerys, Jon, Ned, Tyrion and the Night King) or a hardcover copy of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

One of the more interesting licensing endeavors by HBO—collaborating with Pyrrha to create jewelry inspired by the houses of the series—has become even more interesting now that Pyrrha has announced a new line of Game of Thrones talismans focused on the characters. Here’s the press release:

Over the course of three years, the novel A Game of Thrones was adapted to the graphic form by writer Daniel Abraham and artist Tommy Patterson. 24 issues in total, it hews very closely to the novel that started off the A Song of Ice and Fire series, not least because Abraham had weekly lunches with Martin during the process during which they discussed adaptation issues. In fact, in an interview, the writer revealed that he had learned of a connection between an early line of dialogue and the end of the series:

Suffice it to say, many have tried to figure out what the line might be. And for those who haven’t had the chance to read the comic? It turns out that Comixology has you covered because of their massive bundle of an assortment of comics which includes the first four issues of A Game of Thrones, as well as issues of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time and the Pathfinder comic based on the roleplaying game setting. The 18 comic bundle is just $2.99 in the US, (2.69 euros in Europe!), and as it happens it’s very likely that the dialog Abraham was speaking of is in one of those first A Game of Thrones issues.

For those who have the comics, or get the bundle, feel free to comment below as to which line(s) in the comic are connected to the finale of the A Song of Ice and Fire series!

HBO’s on a roll in the lead up to Sunday’s premiere of Game of Thrones, first announcing that the show—as well as fellow programs Veep and Silicon Valley—had all been renewed through 2017.

That’s not surprising for Game of Thrones, but the fact that it’s only a single season pick-up is quite interesting since if HBO and the show runners have agreed on the “eight season” plan mooted in recent articles, one would expect that an eighth season pickup would also be announced. Possibly this is all pending contract negotiations, but there seems room for some variability in the final shape of the show as it approaches its end.

Shortly after this announcement, HBO released nine new high-resolution images from the premiere episode of the season. The image above is one of them, and the rest can be found in our image gallery.

As we posted about yesterday, we will run a contest leading up to each episode of Season 6 where our followers get to guess who (if anyone) dies in the upcoming episode. The first Death Poll contest will be for our Twitter followers. So, what do you need to do? Simply follow @westerosorg on Twitter and tweet us our guess as to who will die in the first episode. Make sure to include the hashtag #gotdeathpollep1 so we can find your guesses! From those who get it right, we will randomly select a winner who will have a choice between one of the new Funko Dorbz figures (not yet out, but the first wave will include Daenerys, Jon, Ned, Tyrion and the Night King) or a hardcover copy of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

As an addition to the rules posted yesterday (they will be amended as well), we should note that of course there can be multiple correct answer if more than one character dies in an episode.

We’ve heard it from a number of the actors—Season 6 will be the most shocking season yet. We have a feeling that means HBO will be reducing the show’s budget in the bloodiest possible way, by an even greater body count than before. So, we thought we’d make a game out of it and give our followers a chance to win some things in the process. Here’s how it will go down.

Every Monday, starting tomorrow, we will start a new “Death Poll” on Twitter, Facebook or the forum. Each poll will be open to followers/members of that particular venue. To participate in the poll, simply respond to the tweet, Facebook post or forum post and tell us who you think will die in the upcoming episode. Out of those who get it right, a random winner will be selected the following Monday and announced as we start the next poll.

Some rules:

1) Only one entry per person.

2) “No one” is a valid guess, but excludes unnamed, non-recurring characters. If a random guardsman dies in an episode but no named, recurring characters, the correct answer for that episode would be “no one”.

3) There may be multiple correct answers for any given episode if multiple characters die.

4) Prizes will be shipped via Amazon.com, though that should not be a problem for most places.

A fan film project that raised over $15,000 dollars to recreate the tower of joy flashback from A Game of Thrones has successfully completed filming and post-production. You can see “Tower of Joy” below:

It’s pretty much a word-for-word recreation of the scene as described in the novel. And there are aerial shots, to. Pretty amazing what can be done with drones and commercially-available digital cameras!

The last couple of days has seen some significant news concerning the future of Game of Thrones thanks to remarks from showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, as well as HBO executive Michael Lombardo.

First out of the gate was this Variety interview in which Benioff was quoted as saying:

Clarification from other sources—doubtless HBO—clarified that the numbers were premature, but did say that upcoming seasons may be shorter than 10 episodes per season. The piece goes on to cite programming president Michael Lombardo, who acknowledged that Benioff and Weiss wanted to wrap the show in two years, but added that he was an “optimist” and though they would “figure this out”.

Here’s an interesting discovery at Amazon.com: a 20th Anniversary edition of A Game of Thrones from the publisher of the series, with indications that it will be illustrated. It’s due for publication this October, so it’s a ways off yet, and there’s not much more information in the accompanying description.

Truth be told, we were told that something like this was in the planning stages, so it’s good to see that Random House is ready to start revealing some information about it. Whether the illustrations will draw from the rich body of artwork that Random House has already commissioned over the years, or will commission a single artist to illustrate all the pieces (as with the Subterranean Press limited editions), appears to be something fans will have to wait to discover.

A team of students at the Technical University of Munich have worked hard over a month and more to apply their JavaScript and machine-learning knowledge to cull data from the A Song of Ice and Fire novels (as well as cross-referencing with our own A Wiki of Ice and Fire, as well as looking into what’s been going on on Twitter) to present it all in new, novel ways… and, most interestingly, to make a series of predictions on the likelihood of certain characters dying in the course of the books. The site, A Song of Ice and Fire data, explains how they used machine learning for death predictions, for those curious about the nitty-gritty of the whole process.

It’s been impressive seeing the site develop over the last weeks (one of the teachers of the seminar got in touch with us to make sure they could use the wiki data). Great work from the students, and a deal of interesting insights. We’re not sure if all of their predictions are that spot-on, but there’s certainly a method to the madness!

HBO has released three clips from the new season of Game of Thrones. One of them, the longest, features a look at an area that the show hasn’t visited since the first season and which shows how far the show’s VFX prowess has grown over the years. The videos are included in a playlist below:

Reports from the premiere last night stated a new trailer was aired there… and as expected, HBO has kindly shared the trailer with the world:

Seems like there’s a lot of new imagery in this one.

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.