Westeros

Today marks GRRM’s 78th birthday, and there’s a nice early gift for George ahead of the occasion, thanks to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms winning its very first Emmy Award in its inaugural outing!

At the 78th Emmy Awards, the series took home the award for Outstanding Stunt Performance. The award went to the stunt performers Zach Roberts, Gyula Tóth, Chris Cox and Jake Cox for their (spectacular) work on “In the Name of the Mother,” the fifth episode of the show’s first season which featured the much-anticipated trial of seven sequence.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms had received nine nominations in all, including Outstanding Drama Series, which was a great result for the show.

George nevertheless had plenty of reason to celebrate, and took part in pre-Emmy and afterparty events, as well as attending the award show alongside show runner Ira Parker and actors Peter Claffey, Dexter Sol Ansell, and more from the show.

George R.R. Martin and Dexter Sol Ansell (Egg) at the Emmy afterparty.

A very special occasion for collectors and bibliophiles: to mark the 30th anniversary of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, the Folio Society has announced a new signed limited edition of the novel, with the fantastic Jonathan Burton once again providing the artwork after having provided the art for the previous ASoIaF editions.

As reported exclusively by People, only 1,000 copies will be produced, each signed by George R.R. Martin. The 872-page single-volume edition features a “dragon-leather” binding, tipped-in artwork, handmade endpapers, a rolled map, and a clamshell box. The Folio Society’s own page also notes an exclusive introduction by Joe Abercrombie.

The Folio Society describes this as their most ambitious Limited Edition to date, produced with British craftspeople including James Cropper for the bespoke endpapers and Ludlow Bookbinders for the binding. Folio editor James Rose told People that the volume looks as if it had been “taken directly from the Citadel library itself.”

Full details below:

A Game of Thrones 30th Anniversary Limited Edition from the Folio Society.

After five years of gestation, the long-in-the-works theatrical production based on the events of the tourney at Harrenhal has come to fruition. Per the press release we just received:

See the rest of the press release below, but all we can say is wow. Incredibly exciting to finally see things come to fruition… and it explains, I think, why George spent a deal a time in the UK recently (well, that, and season 2 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms being under way).

Deadline has a good their interview with Casey Bloys, Chief Content Officer of HBO, touching on a number of their shows, such as The Pitt and Heated Rivalry (which they have licensed in the US and other territories, and whose performance they are very pleased by). But of particular interest to our fellow fans would be the extended discussion of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and other projects in development… and some remarks on George R.R. Martin’s involvement.

Biggest news for us? Deadline indicates, before diving into the interview, that it’s said that the legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky—creator of the original Star Wars: Clone Wars, Samurai Jack, and Primal—is attached to the Nine Voyages of the Sea Snake animated series about Corlys Velaryon. Interestingly, we know Ryan Condal is a big fan of Tartakovsky, and one wonders if he had any involvement in getting Tartakovsky on board.

Some choice pieces from the interview below.

A still from the Black Knight test Tartakovsky released on Instagram, a stalled Sony Pictures project.

With a month to go until the release of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO has released its first behind-the-scenes look at the show with sound bites from showrunner Ira Parker, as well as George R.R. Martin, Peter Claffey, and more!

HBO has also released a number of new stills from the show, featuring the principal cast, which you can see below.

As is tradition, HBO has released its latest “what’s upcoming next year” video, and this one features a number of new moments from House of the Dragon‘s third season including a great glimpse at Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton) in a breastplate engraved with images of the the High Tower, the Mother, and the Warrior, as well as Corlys Velaryon, Alyn of Hull, the queens Alicent and Rhaenyra, and Prince Aemond.

While no official release date has been given, by sheer happenstance Matt Smith was on the UK show This Morning and let slip that he thought it will premiere this August:

The HBO video also has some clips from the forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but pretty sure it’s nothing we have not seen before.

Entertainment Weekly has the first exclusive interview with Knight of the Seven Kingdoms show-runner Ira Parker, ahead of the first public preview of the show at New York Comic Con this coming Thursday during the panel, “HBO / HBO Max presents A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – Journey into Westeros with Dunk and Egg”.

In the interview, a few interesting points come up. Front and center is the fact that for thematic reasons, this show will not open with the expansive opening title of its predecessors, but a simple title card before launching right into the story. Parker states to EW:

“All decisions came down to Dunk, trying to channel the type of person he is into every aspect of this show, even the title sequence… The title sequences on the original [Game of Thrones] and House of Dragon are big and epic and incredible. Ramin Djawadi’s score is orchestral and large and beautiful. That’s not really Dunk’s M.O. He’s plain and he’s simple and he’s to-the-point. He doesn’t have a lot of flash to him.”

Parker then goes on to note that he promised George R.R. Martin that, per EW, “he would never shift to a perspective of anyone in the upper class. Viewers will always stick with Dunk, Egg, and this lower rim of Westeros society: the armorers, the performers, the barmaids, the whores, and the like.”

And then he says some rather interesting things about the state of House Targaryen at the time of the tourney at Ashford. More on that below, plus how to watch the panel livestreamed courtesy of Popverse!

George R.R. Martin with star Peter Claffey and show runner Ira Parker (right).

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.

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.

As they have teased, fan site Winter is Coming had the opportunity to interview GRRM during the Glasgow Worldcon. Although discussion of HBO’s shows and The Winds of Winter were off the table, the latter got a passing reference initiated by George himself. More generally, however, the interview—conducted by Daniel Roman, and also including comments from Raya Golden, the artist behind the Hugo nominated The Meathouse Man and the Locus shortlisted Voyaging Part 1 is a fun and interesting discussion of George’s history in fandom, his friendship with the late Gardner Dozois, and more.

Touching on a subject very near and dear to our hearts, the House of the Dragon official podcast, hosted by Jason Concepcion and Greta Johnsen, has invited show runner Ryan Condal to answer a number of questions about adapting Fire and Blood to the screen. A lot of big topics are spoken of, including Nettles, Damon’s time in Harrenhal, Aegon’s prophetic dream, and more… and at the end, a discussion of George R.R. Martin’s role as an executive producer on the project which, I think, lays out a sense of how much role GRRM actually has at this stage in the production.

Interestingly, this is a surprise episode—two weeks ago, they announced that they’d have a final episode about now… but that one has been pushed into the future because, according to the hosts, they had so many fan questions sent to them after the finale about adaptation choices that they thought it was worth an added podcast. Things have been fairly quiet in the month since the show ended, though we suppose GRRM indicating issues with the season and making clear that he felt a lot has gone wrong on the show. NOTE: There are spoilers, not just for Fire and Blood, but GRRM reveals details about current plans for season 3.

But then, he has begun his promised post (archive link) about Blood and Cheese, and the butterfly effect it causes, and seems like he’ll go further in explaining his problems with the season.

ETA: An update, as HBO has issued a response via a spokesperson:

In the course of promoting his upcoming Netflix original anime, Terminator: Zero, writer Mattson Tomlin did answer some questions from EW about progress on the Aegon the Conqueror series he’s developing for HBO.

Revealed back in February, Tomlin says it’s still very early on the script, but he’s been having a deal of back and forth discussion with George R.R. Martin about it.

Aegon the Conqueror on Balerion, the Black Dread.

Last week, George posted an update to Not a Blog recounting a trip he took to the UK in late October and early November, in which he refers to meetings with his UK publishers concerning both A Song of Ice and Fire and Wild Cards, and then added some details regarding the play currently called The Iron Throne (it’s a working title):

The play was first announced way back in March of 2021. Dominic and Duncan would be Dominic Macmillan, the play’s director, and Duncan Cooke, the playwright.

And then George wrote a bit about his days working with Ryan Condal and the writers of House of the Dragon....

George R.R. Martin and House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal on the set of the TV show, in what may be the godswood of Harrenhal.

Towards the end of November, a very interesting post on /r/asoiaf Reddit from a moderator and superfan known as zionius_, revealing three pages that appear to be hand-written notes from George R.R. Martin sketching out plans for A Feast for Crows circa 2003-2004. George’s handwriting is not, perhaps, the easiest, so go to the original post for the transcription from zionius_ and members of the subreddit’s mod team, which does a good job of distilling what they found.

Though some questioned whether these were legitimate, we can say with 100% certainty that they are—George’s hand is unmistakable, and in any case the notes came from be shared by way of Arnold Cha, a serious ASoIaF collector who indicated that he got them from an unimpeachable source in the Santa Fe writing/arts scene. With Arnold’s permission, we’re including the images here, but again, go to the subreddit thread for the transcript!

Very interesting report from Deadline Hollywood‘s Nellie Andreeva following an interview with Franesca Orsi, HBO’s head of drama. It’s a wide-ranging interview covering a lot of HBO’s shows, but for our purposes, the most interesting tidbits relate to House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, and potential other Westeros shows.

Addressing the on-going production of season 2 of House of the Dragon, Orsi noted that HBO was fully prepared to rewrite and reshoot anything that needed fixing once the WGA strike ends and the writers can take up their pens again to do writing work, but until then they are confident with the completed scripts they had to work with and have not dealyed producation at all. Speaking of a potential season 3 approval, it sounds like they’re not far from giving an immediate go ahead to season 3 to try and improve the turnaround from season to season. That said, how many seasons for the show in total remains a question: