Westeros

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!

Great news for fans of the Game of Thrones universe! HBO has officially announced a major commitment to the franchise, confirming renewals for both House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. We had strong hints from little birds that HBO was already prepping filming of season 2 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but good to have official confirmation. Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content, revealed the news today, setting a release schedule that promises a new season of a Westeros-based series every year through 2028. Here is the breakdown of the upcoming schedule:

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Random House has published the first details on the 2027 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, revealing the name of the artist involved and the cover image which will be one of the thirteen pieces in the calendar. The calendar will be illustrated by Tyler Jacobson, an award-winning artist who is very well known for his fantasy works in Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons circles in particular—a few years ago a piece of his, a painting of Drizzt do’Uren, sold for $155,000 at auction, setting a record price (which possibly has not been exceeded still).

The art features Beric Dondarrion in battle, with a great depiction of the Dondarrion coat of arms. There’s a suspiciously gigantic figure fighting behind him, who might possibly be Gregor Clegane?

 

With the release of the trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms , we thought we’d capture a few images and comment on them—who the actors and characters are, and any particular details that catch our attention.

For those who have not read “The Hedge Knight”, there will be spoilers!

And here it is, folks, the much-anticipated trailer to HBO Max’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms:

And here’s the link to the livestream to the NYCC panel, courtesy of ReedPop and Popverse:

And the beat of the marketing drums continues to grow. As we anticipated, HBO Max is starting to push more and more information out there ahead of tomorrow’s NYCC panel (which George R.R. Martin has also posted about), and now we get a preview of the trailer featuring Dunk and Egg overlooking the sprawl of pavilions and tents at Ashford Meadow:

Following yesterday’s post on an EW exclusive interview with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms show runner Ira Parker, as well as the fact that the NYCC panel would be livestreamed by Popverse, HBO has gone ahead and starting dialing up the excitement by releasing our first official poster for the upcoming show, underscoring the January release date. We think it’s a pretty clever image

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).

Over at the movie prop collecting podcast The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan Condal recently offered a window into the show’s production as the third season filming is hurtling to completion, detailing a tradition he’s started on the show.

Speaking with his co-host, David Mandel (Veep, Seinfeld), Condal confirmed that as the series moves into its later seasons, a growing number of principal characters are having their “series wrap”. Filmed sometime after the 13th or 14th based on remarks on a recent auction, Condal noted that in the last ten days or so of filming there were several such “wraps”. In the unforgiving world of Westeros, of course, we all know what that means. Condal, whose passion for props apparently amuses his show’s directors and writers, revealed that he has adopted a tradition inspired by Peter Jackson’s celebrated practice on The Lord of the Rings: sending off each departing actor with a significant prop tied to their character.

After the Emmy Awards, where HBO Max shows took a combined 30 wins (including Best Drama Series with The Pitt), CEO Casey Bloys held court with the press such as The Wrap and Deadline)  at an after-party and discussed a number of different topic, covering a wide range of their shows. But for fans of the universe HBO is making out of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the most interesting details related to the scheduling of both A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and the third season of House of the Dragon.

On the former, Bloys revealed that they are planning to premiere A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms this January, so just four months from now. As noted back in May, originally the show had aimed for a 2025 release but was bumped. With this January window apparently locked in, it seems it only just missed the original target.

Via Deadline, they have confirmed that Australian actress Annie Shapero has been cast to play the role of Alysanne Blackwood.

In the history as written by George R.R. Martin, Alysanne was the young maiden aunt of the even-younger Ben Blackwood, and was a skilled archer who took part in a number of battles during the Dance of the Dragons. It’s unclear how much of that will remain unchanged, but according to Deadline Alysanne will appear in five of the eight episodes in the third season of House of the Dragon.

Alysanne Blackwood at the Battle of the Burning Mill, a battle briefly featured during season 2 but without her presence being explicitly noted.

The nominees for this year’s Primetime Emmy awards are now out, and House of the Dragon has added six fresh nominations to its tally, making the total of 14 nominations across the first two seasons. While this is the first time a show in the Game of Thrones universe has not received an Outstanding Drama nomination, it has a bevy of technical award nominations that underscore the show’s incredible production values. These include:

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.

At Summer Game Fest, PlaySide Studios and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have officially announced a new real-time strategy game set in the world of Westeros: Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, launching globally on PC in 2026.

Set in HBO’s Game of Thrones universe, War for Westeros is a premium real-time strategy game (by which I believe they mean it is not a free to play game, as some past licensed strategy games have been). Players will take command of one of several Great Houses—or even the White Walkers— in a bid to claim the Iron Throne.

A cinematic trailer is below, and we have more information and images following:

 

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.