Westeros

According to a report from Icelandic news site Visir, it looks like Game of Thrones filming will wrap on the 24th or 25th. That’ll be 138 or 139 days—four and a half months—since production started. And much of it at a dead run, with at least two units, and sometimes three, working in four different locations across that time span.

So, the last few days of the production are happening right now. And according to Cat Talor, today’s a “BIG day”. Hrm… !

EW has an exclusive report and sneak peek at the season 2 Game of Thrones Blu-ray and DVD set (Pre-order: US Bluray, US DVD, UK Bluray, UK DVD).

Set to be released on February 19, 2013 in the US, the Blu-ray set is particularly rich in additional content, including HBO Select, which means you’ll get digital copies of all the episodes. The full list of contents can be seen over at EW, but here’s a run-down:

And here it is, folks, short but sweet:

Is it what you expected?

Just a head’s up for eager fans of Game of Thrones: tune in to

The release of Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones was a chance for fans the world over to get a closer look behind the scenes at the making of the series, thanks to the writing of series story editor and writer Bryan Cogman having penned the book, filling it with the insights he was able to take from fellow members of the production team and the cast.

And now the collector’s edition has been released (Order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), and it adds an additional wrinkle: among the various bits of swag, such as the scrolled maps, is a whole second volume, this one containing storyboards from artist Will Simpson which are a key part of the process of creating and producing the series.

To explain more about the books, and what they reveal and what’s contained within, we had the opportunity to interview Bryan so that he can provide a better understanding of what fans can expect to find.

Read the interview!

Although we’ve known that Game of Thrones season 3 will be premiering on March 31st since Comic-con, it looks like HBO has decided we all need a reminder. It’s plain and to the point:

So, mark your 2013 Calendar, folks: March 31st, 2013, you’ll want to be in front of the TV (or your mobile device if you have HBO Go).

November is turning into a bit of a boon for fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones, as there’s a number of cool items now available for fans who are interested in continuing to experience the show through various outlets. Most notably, of course, is the fact that the deluxe edition of Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones has been released… and in the US, at least, Amazon.com has an amazing deal—60%

40% off!

And at that price, you’ll get not just Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones (you can read our review of it here), but also scrolled maps based on HBO’s version of the maps of the setting (which are in some ways quite different from The Lands of Ice and Fire), a gold-stamped case… and, perhaps most interestingly of all, a companion book containing season one and season two storyboards by artist Will Simpson, storyboards that promise to reveal scenes that were planned but never filmed, never made it to the screen, or made it to the screen in much-altered form. Truth be told, the price for the set is worth it just for this book alone.

We should have an interview with the writer of Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones, the always welcome Bryan Cogman, to provide his insights into the deluxe collection.

And of course, that’s not all that’s going on this month, even as Game of Thrones is winding down with its last few days in Iceland.

Over at the Making Game of Thrones production blog, an interview has been released with Jonathan Barrass, SFX floor supervisor who works with the Wolf and Dragon units that have been filming in the UK and will soon be filming in Iceland.

Some interesting bits are mentioned along the way regarding season 3 scenes that he’s working on. It’s all mysterious, but some of these are perhaps worth speculating about (beware spoilers from the third novel):

Calendars are a popular item, especially with the holiday season practically around the corner, and for fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones, it only follows suit that the Game of Thrones 2013 Calendar (Order: Amazon US, Amazon UK) would be of interest.

This year’s calendar, produced for by Andrews McMeel Publishing, has already garnered some great reviews over at Amazon, and we can attest to the quality of the paper stock and the printing. Although there is the quirk that the calendar’s images are all drawn from the first season (due to the peculiarities of the production and printing cycle in relation to the time when second season materials was available), it’s all quite strong imagery of a number of the actors and actresses that populate the show, from Emilia Clarke as Daenerys to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister.

One of the interesting things about acclaimed HBO shows such as Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, and Deadwood are the way that actors from one HBO production might appear in another one down the line. Recent examples include Dominic Chianese, who played Junior Soprano, has a small role on Sopranos-alumni Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire or Kim Dickens, Deadwood‘s Joanie Stubbs, as Treme‘s struggling chef Janette Desautel.

So it’s no great surprise that Game of Thrones actors are appearing… although, strangely, they’re not presently appearing on HBO shows, but instead on shows from HBO’s sister-channel, Cinemax. The trend was started by the excellent action-thriller series Strike Back, with no less than three actors—Iain Glen, Liam Cunningham, and recently Charles Dance—appearing on the show.

But now the newest Cinemax action series, Hunted, has its own actors from Game of Thrones making an appearance: Stephen Dillane is a regular, in the role of Rupert Keel… and now Patrick Malahide, who had a brief but memorable appearance in the second season in the role of Lord Balon Greyjoy, is playing a significant role.

With filming in Morocco a wrap, it’s time for the last leg of season 3 filming for HBO’s Game of Thrones. And where else, but not-so-sunny Iceland,

Via RÚV, we learn that filming is set to begin in the area of Kalfaströnd (seen in the image to the right, though rather earlier in the year) in the area of Mývatn. 270 cast and crew members are involved, including approximately 70 local extras. The article also seems to suggest that Dimmuborgir (what a terrific name—makes me think of Tolkien’s Dwimorberg) was being considered as an additional shooting location, although line producer Snorri Þórisson of local production company Pegasus Pictures believes this unlikely due to there being too much vegetation.

Þórisson adds at the end that there’s been talk of the production coming back to Iceland for a prospective fourth season.

Additional photos of the Myvátn region can be found over at Reykjavik Travel.

[Image Source: Klasar at Kálfaströnd / timandkris / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

Just a quick note that the last week or so of our time has been taken up by the extensive work needed to upgrade Westeros.org’s content management system—Expression Engine—from the 1.x we’ve been using since around 2004, to 2.x—and we’ve finally brought up the site live.

Nice. Cyanide has released a brand new DLC for the Game of Thrones RPG (X-Box, PC). Not just featuring new items, weapons, and armor, this DLC actually adds two hours of content to the game in the form of a quest that goes “Beyond the Wall”.

It’s presently available for the X-Box and PCs (I’m guessing this doesn’t mean it’s available on Steam yet). A few screenshots can be found here.

Although the game may not have been an unabashed critical hit, one thing worth noting is that just about everyone who’s ever played it seems very impressed with the story and its ability to capture the tone and themes of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. From the look of these screenshots for the new DLC, it looks like they may be adding a deal more depth to Mors Westford’s already-complicated history. Should be worth checking out.

By way of Tom Akel of MTV Geek, we’ve been pointed to MTV Geek’s latest interview with George R.R. Martin, and it’s an amusing one. Recorded at this year’s past Worldcon, the interviewer asks GRRM to give his views on various proposed match-ups between characters and creatures from A Song of Ice and Fire against characters an creatures from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It’s frivlous amusement, and one does learn a thing or three about some of the characters along the way, such as what level of prowess Martin accords to Jaime Lannister and who counts as a “real wizard”.

We’ve placed this interview, along with many others, over at the So Spake Martin collection. Enjoy, and if you have any quibbles with Martin’s take on the various match-ups, feel free to comment!