Westeros

New York Comic Con returns from October 9th through 12th at the Javits Center, and with it comes its lists of guests. Prominent among them, listed as a guest of honor, is George R.R. Martin. With the Seattle Worldcon in August, this may be the only convention appearances GRRM will be making this year. According to the information on the NYCC page, George will be there on Friday and Saturday. Reports are that the Saturday is entirely sold out, but there may still be tickets for Friday.

(Fun fact: George not only attended the first New York Comiccon in 1964, but was the very first person to shell out $1.50 for a ticket.)

Speaking of big media conventions, Ryan Condal confirmed in the latest episode of his prop collecting podcast, The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of, that there were no plans to promote the still-filming House of the Dragon at San Diego Comic Con as they did last year. In fact, it will be the first SDCC Condal will have missed since moving to LA (barring the Covid years when it did not take place) due to how intense a period July would be for production, and seemed quite sad about it. However, he promised he would push to return to the show next year, citing how much he enjoyed the screening (of last season’s episode 7) and hoped they would repeat something like that.

At Summer Game Fest, PlaySide Studios and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have officially announced a new real-time strategy game set in the world of Westeros: Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, launching globally on PC in 2026.

Set in HBO’s Game of Thrones universe, War for Westeros is a premium real-time strategy game (by which I believe they mean it is not a free to play game, as some past licensed strategy games have been). Players will take command of one of several Great Houses—or even the White Walkers— in a bid to claim the Iron Throne.

A cinematic trailer is below, and we have more information and images following:

Via Variety, news is out that A24 and Bandai Namco are producing a live-action film adaptation of Elden Ring, the hit game from FromSoftware whose background mythos was created by none other than George R.R. Martin. GRRM and production partner Vince Gerardis will both receive producer credits for the film, but what’s particularly exciting is the announcement that Alex Garland is set to both direct and write the film.

Despite initial aims to get this out this year, it seems like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has ultimately shifted entirely out of 2025, and will now be an early 2026 release according to a first look at a trailer for the show revealed to press and industry professionals at the WBD upfront.

Whether that trailer will also be released today or in the future, we do not know.

HBO has announced three new cast members for House of the Dragon Season 3, each taking on important roles as knights caught up in the brutal Dance of the Dragons. I believe at least one of these has been hinted at previously, when Steve Toussaint posted an image of a script listing a number of characters who were present.

You can see the list of the actors and their characters below, as well as some additional thoughts from us!

Barry Sloane, Tom Cullen, and Joplin Sibtain.

The latest episode of The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast, co-hosted by House of the Dragon show runner Ryan Condal and his friend and fellow prop collector David Mandel—whose credits include Seinfeld, Veep, and White House Plumbers—features prosthetics artist Waldo Mason, who joins them to discuss his career, creative process, and some behind-the-scenes teases from House of the Dragon Season 3 where he works as the lead makeup special effects artist.

Waldo Mason is a legendary figure in prosthetics, with a career spanning over thirty years. His work has brought creatures, wounds, and faces to life in films like Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, the Harry Potter series, Game of Thrones, and Rogue One. He’s also a worked on a number of Ridley Scott productions going back to Gladiator (he has some frank remarks to make about a certain star’s behavior on set at the time), as well as Kingdom of Heaven and Prometheus.

In the episode, there’s a fun moment where Ryan hints there’s something in Season 3 he’d like to “liberate” for his own collection—prompting Waldo to laugh and ask, “Well, is it large?” Apparently not, but Ryan and he would confer about there maybe needing to be two of what object he was interested in. Waldo also shares that he was particularly eager to sculpt two specific heads this season. One didn’t appear in the initial brief, to his disappointment—but it sounds like it made it into the revised plan after all. See below for our guess, and beware spoilers drawn from Fire and Blood!

A big splashy announcement of a recent advance by Colossal Biosciences, creators of the “wooly mouse”, with the revelation that they have essentially recreated the 10,000-years extinct dire wolf which once roamed North America. The first two are named Romulus and Remus, after the legendary founders of Rome who were nursed by a she-wolf, while their younger “sister” is named… Khaleesi.

But what really got our attention was the concurrent reporting from The Hollywood Reporter that not only explicitly links the wolves with the direwolves of Game of Thrones, but also reveals that none other than George R.R. Martin is an investor and adviser… and so, too, is Peter Jackson, who provided a certain prop for a photoshoot with Romulus and Remus that Game of Thrones fans may recognize…

House of the Dragon‘s third season officially kicked off a few days ago, and HBO wanted to make sure everyone knew it by having star Emma d’Arcy make the announcement in a video:

There’s quite a bit more news besides that, however, as some new castings have been revealed… and a new interview with show runner and co-creator Ryan Condal responds to some questions from EW about the season to come… and gives his version of the situation that stirred a great deal of controversy preceding it.

As far as the casting goes, two northerners have been announced: Dan Fogler will play Ser Torrhen Manderly, and Tommy Flanagan will play

[Edit: Ryan Condal has since confirmed to us that Roderick is a lord on the show, not a knight.]

See the full press release that came with the announcement, and list of returning cast members as well as confirmed new ones, below!

NetMarble has announced the beginning of pre-registration for Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, they’re upcoming free-to-play mobile and PC action RPG set during the 4th season of Game of Thrones. Pre-registration begins today through to the game’s release, currently planned for the 2nd quarter of this year.

See below for the full details regarding pre-registration, and follow this link to pre-register today!

Via The Hollywood Reporter, a wide-ranging interview with HBO’s Head of Drama, Francesca Orsi, touched on the budget of the upcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. To quote her in the piece:

Obviously, the story it adapts takes place basically in one location, and features a tourney rather than actual battles, so that’s part of it. But it also sounds like part of the appeal of adapting “The Hedge Knight” was its smaller scale that meant it could be done at a lower budget.

At a recent Emmys FYC (“For Your Consideration” event), House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, executive producer Sara Hess, and a bevy of key cast members teased a number of details about the in-production Season 3, which as yet does not have a release date (though it’ll certainly be sometime in 2026). Noting that cameras haven’t quite started rolling—on The Stuff Dreams Are MAde Of podcast, recorded a week or two so earlier, he noted he was in Wales for final location scouting—the showrunner revealed that writing was basically done on the season. Condal and company hinted that this season will cover four major events described in Fire and Blood, GRRM’s account on which the show is based, and that there would be some new faces in the cast but that most of the significant characters had already been introduced.

Netmarble has announced that their forthcoming Game of Thrones: Kingsroad is Coming to Steam Next Fest, with a demo that will be available to be downloaded and played on PC from February 24th at 8:00AM through to March 3rd (PST). The game is developed for iOS and Android as well, but no word whether similar demos will be available for those platforms.

They are encouraging users to visit the Steam page for the game and add it to their wishlist, with goal tiers for total wishlistings releasing special items and perks to those who play the demo:

A trailer has been released for In the Lost Lands, a fantasy film based on a short story of the same name by George R.R. Martin. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil), it stars Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element) and Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) as the characters Gray Alys and Boyce, who in the film join forces to seek a powerful magical object in a post-apocalyptic, Western-inflected place called the Lost Lands. You can see the trailer below:

On the heels of Heritage’s record-breaking Game of Thrones auction, there’s now a first for House of the Dragon as the production and HBO have donated a Daemon Targaryen costume from season 1, episode 6—worn by Matt Smith in the scenes where Daemon and Laena fly their dragons above Pentos—to be auctioned off at Propstore as part of the Costume Designers Guild Awards’
contribution to that IATSE Emergency Relief Fund’s auction following the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. It is a screen-matched costume and, from what I can tell, complete including gloves, boots, and belts, all resplendent with hand-stitched embroidery.

Deadline has a detailed report concerning everything said in a recent interview by HBO’s Head of Drama Series & Films, Francesca Orsi, regarding the Game of Thrones franchise. Besides the usual update on House of the Dragon and its massive opening for season 3 (cameras start rolling in March, according to reports), Orsi reveals that HBO’s so bullish on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms that if they renew it they may well order two seasons to be filmed back-to-back.