Westeros

Deadline reports that Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest is scheduled to reach theaters on June 1, 2029. Owen Harris is attached to direct, with Beau Willimon writing the screenplay.

We reported on Willimon’s involvement in March, when the subject of the film was still speculation. Warner Bros. revealed its working title in April. Now the project has both a date and a director, which means it’s rolling along.

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.

Via Page Six Hollywood, an interesting bit of news has come out that screenwriter Beau Willimon (House of Cards, Andor) is working on writing a script for a Game of Thrones-related film. Page Six Hollywood speculates that it’s an Aegon the Conqueror film, which is interesting given recent news that the Conquest was being developed for both film and television. We initially thought all of this was tied to HBO keeping room open to see what fit the material best, but that was with the belief that Mattson Tomlin was the writer developing it.

Aegon the Conqueror, by Amok (Roman Papusev)

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.

HBO has just dropped a teaser for the final A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms trailer, which will be released tomorrow. It captures one of the early moments in George R.R. Martin’s original “The Hedge Knight” that won the hearts of many readers:

HBO has also released a number of new images of cast members!

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.

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.

Max has put out a new video about upcoming Max and HBO programing, starting with the much-anticipated Dune: Prophecy, and moving on to programming for 2025 such as The Gilded Age, White Lotus, The Last of Us... and of course we get some glimpses of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms:

Comparing it to the previous teaser, all the footage seems to be exactly the same as what we’ve seen before, which is disappointing. But it’s nice to see it featured prominently among some other very anticipated shows.

(Also, speaking of HBO and Max, if you have not gotten around to watching The Penguin, the finale just aired and really capped the limited series off. Tremendous performances from Colin Farrell and Cristin Miloti, in particular.)

This last month has been one of the busiest I can remember, with road trips to neighboring Norway and Denmark and all sorts of other things, so we’ve been a bit behind in getting the initial content out for episode one, “A Son for a Son”. We’re now trying to rectify that by catching up with a report on our attending a special screening of the premiere episode of House of the Dragon in Stockholm, including some thoughts in sparked in response to a critic’s commentary on the cinematography of the new season.

But first, one part of being so busy is that while we pushed out our commentary video soon after the first episode aired, we thought we’d make a post about it sometime during what turned out to be a very long evening post-screening. So, for those who’ve missed it, here’s our video:

And now to discussing the screening, and whether the show’s cinematography has gotten worse since Miguel Sapochnik left.

Linda and Elio at the post-screening afterparty.

It’s not usual for HBO to do this even before the premiere, but it seemed a foregone conclusion to everyone (including GRRM and Ryan Condal, based on remarks they have made) that House of the Dragon would see at least one more season. But now the word is official, via a press release from HBO:

Short and sweet, as they say.

The good folks at the WB Shop have sent the ravens out to inform the realm that “All Must Choose”... among the many new branded House of the Dragon items, from apparel to games, books to sunglasses, and much much more! Below you’ll find images of just a sampling of items, and further details with some links for some particularly choice items!

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has extended his congratulations to playwright Eboni Booth for her recent Pulitzer Prize for her dramatic play, “Primary Trust”.

This may seem rather random, except GRRM goes on to reveal that she is the latest screenwriter to try and develop the story of Nymeria and the Ten Thousand Ships into a pilot for HBO:

Princess Nymeria as depicted by J.K. Drummond for The World of Ice and Fire

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.

We thought that given the very successful launch of the final trailer for the second season of HBO’s House of the Dragon, some of the scenes and images we see sparked some curiosity and thinking from us as we tried to identify various details. Follow us below as we go over 30-odd screenshots from the trailer!

HBO has released a two minute behind the scenes video featuring comments from showrunner Ryan Condal and an array of the show’s leading actors, including Matt Smith, Emma d’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Olivia Cooke, and more. Lots of glimpses of heraldry, which we always love to see… but yet again we seem to be getting some confusion between who’s using the two-legged dragon and who is using the four-legged dragon. At this stage, I suspect they’ll never really hammer out the details on that one!

In other news from the world of HBO’s expanion of the Game of Thrones universe, Redanian Intelligence has reported, and which has since been verified and expanded on by The Hollywood Reporter‘s James Hibberd, that director Owen Harris was on board to direct episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Per Hibberd, Harris is directing three of the six episodes, which makes us wonder if Harry Bradbeer (also revealed by Redanian Intelligence) is directing the other three. For those who don’t know Harris’s name, he’s directed our favorite episode of Black Mirror, the widely-acclaimed (including winning a Hugo Award!) “San Junipero”.

Also, an interesting note from Hibberd that the show has lost its subtitle of “The Hedge Knight”. This could be a promising sign, in a way, since it could be taken to mean that HBO may be inclined to see this as a continuing series rather than a one-off limited series. We wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the episodes gets titled “The Hedge Knight”.

Production on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to begin next month. House of the Dragon returns to screens on June 16th.