Westeros

One last tidbit from the Comic-Con panel: the official premiere date for Season 3 is March 31st. This is basically the same Sunday as Season 2’s April 1st premiere, so it’s not really much different… but still, good to have an actual date on hand for the premiere.

With the big reveal at San Diego Comic Con, we thought we’d run through the new cast members one by one, and give a bit more sense as to who they are. See below for our very lengthy look.

San Diego Comic-Con is going strong, and the Game of Thrones panel has just now wrapped—and we have the press release, which is utterly massive. Find out who’s playing the Queen of Thorns, Tormund Giantsbane, Edmure Tully, the Blackfish, Meera and Jojen Reed, Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, and much, much more!

EW has some amazing coverage of San Diego Comic Con, and today at 12:45PM Pacific Time (3:45PM Eastern, 8:45PM UK) they’ll be talking to Michelle Fairley, Emilia Clarke, and more… oh, and one George R.R. Martin, too. This will be ahead of the Game of Thrones panel in the massive Hall H at 2:45PM Eastern time.

We’ve some coverage coming from the panel, courtesy of HBO and Amy Marie, but be sure to keep an eye on HBO Connect, which will also be live tweeting the event, and before that they have Kristian Nairn tweeting on location from the convention floor.

The intrepid Amy_Marie97, who’ll be providing coverage of San Diego Comic Con for Westeros.org, has had a chat with the folks at Dark Horse regarding their current and future licensed Game of Thrones product releases. Quite a few of their showstopper statues and miniature replicas were on display, and Amy has shared some photos as well as more detailed product descriptions, which you can find below.

Our first look in motion at the new Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms MMO from Bigpoint, which we’ve reported on recently, has come to us by way of the Huffington Post. See the trailer below:

According to HuffPo, the free-to-play, browser-based game’s set for a 2013 release, will eventually include options for varying sizes of player characters (one wonders just how “giant” the “giant” sized characters will be), and will have a seasonal cycle (presumably an unpredictable one) that changes in the course of play.

HBO has sent out a press release unveiling the existence of Game of Thrones: The Complete 1st Season Collector’s Edition (Amazon US), which will be hitting shelves on November 20th, just in time for the holidays!

Available in both Bluray and DVD editions, the complete set will feature a new, House Sigil display case that features the arms of the Baratheons, Starks, Targaryens, and Lannisters, as well as a Dragon Egg paperweight. Additionally, the Bluray box will contain an exclusive Bluray disc featuring the first episode of the second season, providing a little taste before the probable February or March release date of Season 2 on Bluray.

You can find the full press release below.

Hot on the heels of some programming changes due to a scheduling conflict for Lena Headey and the addition of Rose Leslie to the Game of Thrones panel this Friday at San Diego Comic Con, unfortunate news by way of the official Game of Thrones Twitter: Kit Harington will be missing the panel, due to a broken ankle. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Harington’s broken ankle was unrelated to the production, and will in fact not affect the filming schedule (which suggests Harington’s first scenes are probably weeks away).

According to a tweet from the official twitter for Ballyscullion Park in Northern Ireland, it looks like the first day of filming took place on their grounds:

They later added that the filming was wrapping up right around now, so that’s the first day done. Nice to see a new location—the woodlands at the park seem to have been the focus—added to the mix….

But more importantly, it looks like we now know that returning Season 1 director Daniel Minahan is starting off the third season, because as @ballyscullionpark noted that it was episode 1 that was filming, Cat Taylor noted that “Dan M” was directing:

So, one day down… quite a lot more to go. We’re looking at filming going into November.

According to James Hibberd at EW, it looks like

Game of Thrones panel this Friday due to a scheduling conflict (chances seem good that that would relate to Judge Dredd). However, this doesn’t mean the panel will be down one—instead, the charming Rose Leslie (Ygritte) will be joining the panel, as well as attending the post-panel autograph session.

Following up last night’s post, Red Carpet News TV scored several more interviews at London Film and Comic Con with members of the cast of Game of Thrones which they’ve now put up. You can find interviews with Nonso Anozie (Xaro Xhoan Daxos), Amrita Acharia (Irri), Eugene Simon (Lancel Lannister), Ralph Ineson (Dagmer), Steven Cole (Kovarro), and Ross Mullan (who played a White Walker on the show).

You can find all these interviews embedded below.

A report in the Irish Daily Mirror—the exact text which I’m not able to find, but it’s been reported at second hand by The Independent—claims that Liam Cunningham, who plays Ser Davos Seaworth, has signed on for another six seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones. This isn’t unexpected news, as such, but it’s interesting as it suggests that Cunningham’s initial contract might have been shorter (which in itself is a bit unusual, since most contracts for long-term cast tend to have five or six year options) and now the production is on a footing where paying more to secure services of second season additions to the cast as far into the possible future as a seventh or even eighth season starts to make sense.

Several members of the Game of Thrones cast were on hand for London Film and Comic Con, and we have a brief video from the Game of Thrones panel—featuring Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister), Rose Leslie (Ygritte), Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth), and John Bradley (Samwell Tarly)—filmed from the audience. We’ve also found several interviews from Red Carpet News that should be of interest to fans of the show. You can find the videos embedded below:

A tweet regarding the Irish Blue Cross horse ambulance service in connection to HBO’s Game of Thrones may raise spectres of HBO’s Luck and its decided lack of luck when it came to horse safety—leading to the critically-praised series coming to a sudden, untimely end—but the fact is that this shows due care for the safety of the horses the production uses. And it seems to hint that some chase sequences are going to feature this season:

Having spotted this already on the shelves in our local SF/F speciality bookstore, I decided to check what the word is on Bantam’s 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), with art from Marc Simonetti.

It looks like July 10 is the official release date, though it may well be that some booksellers have already put it on the shelves (as our local shop did).

We’ve only seen a few preview images up to now, so getting a chance to at last look through the whole calendar was quite a pleasure. Particularly noteworthy was a fantastic image of Daenerys in the House of the Undying and a vivid landscape featuring the Rhoyne. Well worth sticking on your wall next year, but make sure to order one sooner rather than later—these tend to sell out their print runs within a couple of months, and after that finding them at reasonable prices can be difficult at times!