Westeros
The 'A Song of Ice and Fire' Domain
News
A new report from Variety shares a piece of information from an anonymous “production insider”: the 10 episode first season of House of the Dragon managed an average per episode budget somewhat under $20 million. This is cited as a great achievement given rising production costs and the greater number of dragons that will need to be CGed in the series. Variety reports:
[T]he production insider says HBO is now so adept at these world-building series through years of not just GoT, but also producing Westworld”and His Dark Materials, that the team can make a high-quality series as efficiently and effectively as possible.
By way of comparison, the final season of Game of Thrones cost somewhere in the vicinity of $15 million an episode.
A dragon egg on the verge of hatching accompanies the announcement from HBO that House of the Dragon will premiere on August 21st of this year. Along with the poster, HBO has also sent out eight new images featuring a variety of characters from the series, that you can see below.
With a ten episode run, that means it’ll end on October 23rd… just two days prior to the release of The Rise of the Dragon. Interesting timing, that… For more on this informational art book that very much ties in to the events covered by House of the Dragon, see here.
Yesterday, we said that we wanted to make sure we could get the name of all the contributing artists out there, and the team over at Ten Speed Press put that together quickly for us. In total, there are 38 artists who’ve contributed to The Rise of the Dragon, and below you’ll find the full list as well as links to their websites or online portfolios. We’re very proud to have worked closely with all the artists on this one, providing notes, references, etc., and they’ve delivered art that we think will please fans.
The Rise of the Dragon hits shelves in October 2022!
Balerion, the Black Dread, from the cover of The Rise of the Dragon. By Ertaç Altınöz, for Random House
As promised, we can now discuss in more detail our forthcoming book, The Rise of the Dragon, as it has not been posted about at Not a Blog. The book will hit shelves in October, both in the US and in the UK as HarperVoyager announced they’ve picked up the rights (and shown off their own cover).
US Cover of The Rise of the Dragon, by Ertaç Altınöz
Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has provided fans a lengthy update on The Winds of Winter, HBO’s successor shows, and more… and in the process lets the cat out of the bag regarding one project we here at Westeros.org have been working on for the last couple of years.
We’ll provide a quick summary below:
The Three Chroniclers, by Chase Stone.
A Song of Ice and Fire • George R.R. Martin • House of the Dragon • Game of Thrones • Wild Cards • Other Books and Projects | Comments:
A brand new calendar has been announced for 2023: the World of Fire and Blood 2023 Calendar, a departure as it focuses on characters and events first described in The World of Ice and Fire and expanded on in Fire and Blood. Another departure: where previous calendars were single-artist affairs, this one will feature multiple artists, including prior calendar artists Marc Simonetti and Magali Villeneuve, as well as artists new to the calendars such as Chase Stone and René Aigner
Aegon the Conqueror and Balerion destroy Harrenhal, by Marc Simonetti. (This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.)
Random House has revealed their publishing plans for the summer, and fans have noticed that July seems particularly stacked with House of the Dragon tie-ins using Fire and Blood as the focal material.
First, Random House revealed that on July 12th they will publish tie-in editions of Fire and Blood that will feature a cover using photography from House of the Dragon. Second, Random House announced that the 2023 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, to release on July 19, will be based entirely on Fire and Blood. And, in a departure from the previous calendars, this will feature an array of artists rather than just one. No word yet as to who has contributed.
Fans may notice these July dates, and speculation has run that the dating relates to the as-yet-unannounced premiere of House of the Dragon.
[Affiliate links to Amazon.com can be found in this post)]
An interesting piece of news via The Hollywood Reporter, as it reveals that Marvel is adapting the first volume of Wild Cards, with the writing work being handled by Wild Cards veteran Paul Cornell and the art by Mike Hawthorne. Titled Wild Cards: The Drawing of the Cards, the first issue will be released in June.
Of course, this is not the first time Marvel has dabbled with Wild Cards...
A sit-down with various media outlets has provided some fresh information from Casey Bloys, HBO’s and HBO Max’s chief content officer, regarding the future of the Game of Thrones franchise, from the release date of House of the Dragon to the status of a number of projects in development. While there’s nothing really concrete, the one thing Bloys committed to is that House of the Dragon is definitely airing this year, but that the conversation has only just now started thanks to the show officially wrapping.
We’ll provide a brief bullet point of the main information that came out of the interview with Bloys:
First announced in 2019, the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Banbridge, Northern Ireland has now officially opened its doors. The opening ceremony was attended by a number of actors from the series, including Kristian Nairn (Hodor), Natalie Emmanuel (Missandei), and Isaac Hampstead Wright (Bran Stark).
See below for the press release and additional images!
Kristian Nairn (“Hodor”), Nathalie Emmanuel (“Missandei”) and Isaac Hempstead Wright (“Bran Stark”) help to ‘Break the Chains’ for the brand-new Game of Thrones Studio Tour located in Northern Ireland.
Photo courtesy of Game of Thrones Studio Tour
Brian Cox, star of Succession and many, many other films and television programs over the years, has revealed his near-brush with Game of Thrones in GQ, where an excerpt of his new memoir—titled Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (Amazon affiliate link)—discusses his views on the monetary side of the acting business, and the sheer chance by which some programs become global hits and others fall flat. In the course of the excerpt, Cox writes that he’s often asked if he was ever offered a role in Game of Thrones:
As we’re on the subject, 25th Hour was written by David Benioff, who of course went on to be showrunner for Game of Thrones. I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game of Thrones—reason being that every other bugger was—and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season. I know very little about Game of Thrones so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to google it just in case he was, because I turned it down.
Sad news today, when it was announced that John Jos. Miller had passed away on January 5th. He was 67 years old. A long-time friend and collaborator with George R.R. Martin and other members of the Wild Cards Consortium, Miller was a founding member of the Wild Cards group and extended his influence into the RPGs from which that shared universe sprang by writing Wild Cards source books for Steve Jackson Games and Green Ronin.
A vintage photo of Wild Cards writers in the wild, wearing t-shirts featuring some of their signature characters. From left to right: John Jos. Miller, his wife Gail Gerstner-Miller, Walter Jon Williams, and GRRM.
After years of hints, August saw the official announcement by George R.R. Martin that a short film based on “The Night of the Cooters”, written by long-time friend (and one of the funniest writers in the genre) Howard Waldrop, was in production. Now, the result of that adaptation can be glimpsed for the first time in this teaser:
With a screenplay by award-winning author Joe Lansdale, Night of the Cooters stars and is directed by Vincent D’Onofrio, who fans of Netflix’s Daredevil may have very recently glimpsed on the new Disney+ show Hawkeye. Notably, the teaser’s description on Youtube also reveals that Ramin Djawadi of Game of Thrones and Westworld fame composed the music for the film.
As viewers can see, the short film is executed in a merging of live-action and animation, dubbed “Trioscope” by the inventors of the process, Trioscope Studios who made the four-episode WWII drama The Liberator for Netflix.
It’s now official: the official Game of Thrones Studio Tour experience at Linen Mill Studios in Northern Ireland will open its doors on February 4th, and fans can already begin booking their tickets now.
Via a report in Variety, we’ve learned that Steve Conrad—creator of Amazon’s Patriot and other shows—has been attached as lead writer and executive producer of a potential (emphasis on the potential) Game of Thrones-universe hour-long series based on the Dunk and Egg novellas [Note: Amazon affiliate link].
To date, three novellas introducing readers to Ser Duncan the Tall and Egg have been published, with a fourth existing in a partial state. Beyond that, George R.R. Martin revealed substantial hints about the future of the two characters as planned in additional novellas in our own The World of Ice and Fire, sketching out Dunk’s and Egg’s history all the way through their deaths.
