After digging around a bit, we’ve learned that the preview of Game of Thrones that’s part of the True Blood pre-show will feature both new footage as well as an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the production. And on top of that, as previously reported, media sites such as Westeros will be receiving a new still to share with everyone on the web.
Via e-mail, HBO has informed media sites that the True Blood pre-show starting at 8:40 EST will feature “previews of upcoming HBO Original Programming including Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Mildred Pierce, In Treatment, Big Love, Eastbound & Down, Bored to Death, Enlightened and Curb Your Enthusiasm.” A little bird has whispered to us that there’s some sort of long trailer already floating around in the labyrinths of HBO, but whether the pre-show preview will be that or another short teaser like the first teaser remains a question.
HBO promises to have the video up on the web—probably at the official Game of Thrones sub-site—within minutes of its airing, which is good news for those of us overseas (*ahem*). Also, a new still from the production will be sent to media sites to post online. Suffice it to say, Linda and I will be getting to bed late…
Notice how Game of Thrones leads the list of shows? Could be coincidence… or it could be a sign that HBO is aware of just how massive the interest is in the series on-line. A little bird has also whispered that some eyebrows were raised at how many hits that first little teaser earned…
Any odds that this time around, Daenerys Targaryen will be featured? Emilia Clarke has some gorgeous new portrait photos posted, taken by renowned celebrity photographer Lorenzo Aguis. Could be sheer coincidence, of course, but… one never knows.
Thanks to the Dagbladet interview with Amrita Acharya, which revealed that HBO’s Game of Thrones will be airing on Canal+ in Norway, we’ve done a bit of digging. An agreement appears to have been made in February between Canal+ Scandinavia (a separate entity from Canal+ in France, Spain, and other countries) and HBO. This 3 year agreement gives Canal+ Scandinavia exclusive first airing rights to HBO’s content, somewhat similar to the Sky-HBO deal we have previously reported on for the U.K.
A representative for Canal+ in Sweden has confirmed that Game of Thrones is part of this agreement, and will air both on the regular network and their HD network in all of Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) at the same time. Although the Dagbladet report suggests a Fall or Winter 2011 air date, Canal+ in Sweden says they don’t have a firm air date as of yet but they promise to keep in touch with Westeros.org when there is new information.
If you’ll recall, a couple of weeks ago, Westeros.org put out the word that a focus group was in the offing related to the A Song of Ice and Fire series, having been selected by Schlessinger Associates—a leading market research company—as the best way to get the word out. What we couldn’t state publicly then, but we can now that it’s done, is that this was specifically commissioned by none other than HBO as part of their marketing research for Game of Thrones.
We’re still getting some reports in, but having now seen a very thorough post at “The Princess and the Warlock” blog, we thought we’d add some more details we’ve had. Among the questions asked of the men’s group was what would make a strong tag phrase for the series. “Winter is Coming” was agreed to be very strong, but a number of other iconic lines were mentioned, such as “The things I do for love,” “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” and the Targaryen motto, “Fire and Blood” (other mottos, such as “Hear Me Roar”, were not felt to be particularly useful from a marketing perspective).
The topic of magic also came up in the discussion. Although the reporter did not recall the details of whether it was brought up by the focus group leader or by the group themselves, it was discussed as being an important facet of the setting. It was also noted to be markedly different from magic in other adapted works, such as Harry Potter—more low-key, leaving the setting “more realistic”.
Among the things focus group participants were asked to provide were examples of any paraphenalia they had related to the series, including things like copies of fan fiction. It was noted to us, however, that more than one participant noted that there’s relatively little fan fiction out of respect for George R.R. Martin’s wishes on the matter.
The Princess and the Warlock note a number of interesting details, the most notable of which were that more topics were covered by the women’s group, which led to some questions the men did not get asked. The question as to who the heroes and villains were were noteworthy, but the question about the most romantic character might well leave HBO scratching their head. What are they to make of the fact that the most romantic male character is the dead Prince of Dragonstone, Rhaegar Targaryen? Perhaps this will improve the odds of fans getting a glimpse of Rhaegar, Lyanna, and other noteworthies from Robert’s Rebellion… Certainly, the topic of flashbacks came up.
Many thanks to all the great fans who answered our call and also provided these reports (particularly Brude, whose collage made us learn just what the Defenestration of Prague was), and for naming Westeros and our friends over at Winter is Coming as favorite sites to get all the news there is to have regarding the series and show. Also a hat tip to the Westeros Sorting community on LiveJournal for helping to spread the word and show that LJ had a vibrant fan community as well.
Who’s Joe, you may ask? An American residing in Northern Ireland, Joseph Campo is an independent actor, writer, and director who has set his sights on landing a role in HBO’s Game of Thrones. To drum up support, he’s taken to Youtube, where he’s created a channel where he’s posted several videos making his case with a substantial helping of humor. But humor aside, Campo is quite serious, and has already done some legwork, such as verifying that he should be eligible to join British Equity due to his current acting associations.
His latest video seems to hint that he’ll be preparing an audition video for the role of Mance Rayder, or perhaps some other wildling, but we’ll share his first video which brought him to the attention of Game of Thrones fanatics:
In an interview with Vanity Fair, HBO‘s president of programming Michael Lombardo discusses HBO’s past and present Emmy success, far and away the most nominated and award-winning cable network for the last number of years. In the course of the discussion, Lombardo brings up Game of Thrones, where he has the following to say:
“The fact that it was genre, i.e. a little bit of magic, in a world that is not in fact real was irrelevant to the storytelling. The human drama that I read in the page, the characters as scripted by David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss]—;I was hooked on the pilot after reading it, and I’ve done this enough now to know that doesn’t happen all the time and when it happens you need to pay attention to it. Because to have a great show, I got to tell you, what you have to start with is a great script. It was a great script.”
Thanks to Nymeria_WiC for bringing the interview to our attention.
Conan Stevens has a terrific update on what he’s been doing, besides putting on more muscle (by his estimation, he’s gained 7kg—about 15 lbs.—since he arrived in Belfast). He identifies the riding trainers, The Devil’s Horsemen (who have an extremely long list of prior credits), and comments that his extra bulk has led to some alterations to his costume. He’s coy about the details of the costume, but his remark that, “Ser Gregor Clegane will be the centurion tank of Westeros,” and, ” the weight is spread over my entire body rather than having all that weight just hanging off my shoulders,” certainly suggests that he’s in a suit of plate armor, just as the character is described in the novels.
Other details of note? Just as was reported from the pilot film set, it seems a documentary crew is on hand preparing extras for DVD/Blu-Ray and (Stevens speculates) pre-airing promotion. The crew caught Stevens and Rory McCann, cast as Sandor Clegane, rehearsing their big fight scene. Conan wraps up by noting that since joining in the production, his career has been making great advances, with a number of productions showing interest in his involvement once he gets back to Thailand.
Below, you can find a video of The Devil’s Horsemen company performing at a medieval faire:
Just a quick mid-week recap of the news that we’ve had from the production so far, as there have been a few relevant tweets, articles, and blog posts of note.
Television Without Pity’s Tubey Awards are being voted on, and Game of Thrones is among the nominees for “Most Anticipated Show of 2010-211”. If you can take just a moment, just head over there and vote! The category is on the final voting page, being category #12.
We noticed that Time Warner (corporate parent of HBO) has a regular corporate newsletter. Digging into the latest edition, we see that Game of Thrones is mentioned as definitely airing on one of Sky’s channels, along with Boardwalk Empire (which will be the show that launches the new deal), Luck, and other current series such as Entourage once their current broadcast right agreements run out.
There is an interesting note for followers of progress on HBO’s Game of Thrones series in his post announcing his cancelling an appearance at New York Comic Con.
Besides noting he plans to visit Belfast (main location for shooting of the series) after attending Octocon in Dublin, he notes the possibility that he’ll also visit Malta (site of location shoots for many of the scenes set in Pentos and regions east). As Octocon takes place in mid-October, it seems like the Malta location shooting will cover the bulk of that month and a good part of September as well. As we’ve previously reported, the Malta shoot has been stated to take six weeks. Mid-September through the end of October seems likely now.
It’s been the date bandied about since the pilot shoot, but the reshoots have made it seem possible—and HBO has certainly indicated—that the premiere would slip to late Spring or even early Summer. Now, HBO has vanquished that possibility at the TCA Summer Press Tour, stating that the show is definitely set for Spring 2011. Via Matt Roush of TV Guide.com, one of the executives stated that early March was a possibility (March 3rd is stated elsehere), but the official line is that all they’ll commit to right now is Spring 2011. Roush and James Hibbard of the Live Feed provide more details, noting that there’s enormous pressure on the writers to match the expectations of the fans in the “blogosphere”.
In other news, it sounds like no new footage was shown from Game of Thrones at the press panel, although “a wisp” was shown. This was probably the teaser that we’ve all seen before (confirmed by HitFix).
There’s a terrific blog post from Conan Stevens (cast as Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides) from Belfast, in which he recounts details such as his diet, his training regimen, and his run-ins with Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo) and Rory McCann (Sandor Clegane, the Hound) at the training center, as well as bumping into executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. He mentions that he’s started work on a short, brutal fight sequence he’ll be taking part in, the choreography being handled by stunt coordinator Buster Reeves and his team.
Finally, after a question from us, he discusses seeing and trying on Gregor’s armor for the first time, and was very impressed by the work that was done. As he notes, having professionals making armor for you is a fair sight better than making it yourself (as he did when he was part of the SCA).
On Monday, he’ll be taking part in “intensive horse riding lessons” from a famous horse riding stunt team, and feels that with all this intense training and this film footage, he’ll be able to apply to be an accredited stuntman in his native Australia.
We’re most of the way through the second week of filming on Game of Thrones, and excellent weather this week has allowed the production to finally start location shooting around Belfast. Word from Northern Ireland (via comments at Winter is Coming) is that the location shoot was in Ballymoney. This region is noted for its lovely, rural farmsteads and the picturesque river Bann. It’s easy to speculate that the rural area might be used to represent the royal progress as it approaches King’s Landing, or perhaps that the river will be used for a scene involving Arya, Sansa, Joffrey, and Mycah the butcher’s boy.
In other news, the Times of Malta has a report on film and television production on the island. Though primarily touting their landing a new Sinbad adventure program for Sky1, HBO’s Game of Thrones is mentioned in passing as a major television production, one of the largest to ever be carried out in Europe. Of particular note? The Malta shoot is said to be about six weeks long. We know the shoot is set to start sometime in September, which is also when Winterfell exterior scenes may be shot. This makes it seem even likelier that there will be some production overlap, and at a guess a single director will be responsible for all scenes shot in Malta.
The last really major casting announcement has been made, thanks to Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Tribune: British actor Charles Dance has been cast as Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and patriarch of the Lannister family. Though his character appears late in the series, his presence is felt throughout the series. He is a Machiavellian figure, commanding, ambitious, and powerful.
Charles Dance was a fan favorite from early on, thanks to his performance in the BBC’s Bleak House and other productions. But Westeros.org can exclusively reveal that a source close to the production told us months ago that he was already a favorite of the executive producers, who had had an opportunity to meet with him (or so we’re told) as he was filming Your Highness in the Paint Hall in Belfast just before Game of Thrones began production there. We’re not sure why it took quite so long for negotiations to sort out, but suffice it to say, now it’s signed, sealed, and delivered.
Below, is an interview with Dance about his role in Sky’s Going Postal, an adaption from Terry Prachett’s Discworld oeuvre.
And here is Dance in his famous role of the unfeeling, grasping lawyer Tulkinghorn in Bleak House:
Dance recently appeared in actor James Franco’s short film, The Clerk’s Tale, which was promoted online with some high res stills that feature the actor in his role as a suit salesman.