Westeros

The highly-anticipated trailer for season 7 of Game of Thrones has landed after HBO and EW teased with new photos and the release of the official poster.

There are dragons. And maps. And spoilers, of course.

Season 7 premieres on July 16.

HBO has released the official poster for the forthcoming Season 7, revealing the rather diabolical image of the Night’s King:

HBO also took the additional step of releasing the image in video form, transitoning from a close-up of his ice-blue eye. You can see that below:

EW has seven brand-new photos from the forthcoming Game of Thrones Season 7, including the first look at just how enormous Drogon has gotten this season. (Fair warning: there are spoilers among the images.)

Back in March, one of the new directors to the show, Matt Shankman, remarked to James Hibberd that the dragons are the size of Boeing 747s, and the accompanying picture seems to bear that out.

May 17th is a significant day to our friends in Norway, but it also has a more global importance: World Baking Day! As fans of cakes, tarts, pastries, and all manner of other doughy treats, we’ve enjoyed our share of Game of Thrones-themed baked goods from home-made lemon cakes to Choccyoccydoodah‘s glorious Red Wedding cake.

Now, the HBO Store has fans covered if wanting a quick, easy way to make a Game of Thrones themed cake thanks to two silicon baking moulds featuring the Targaryen dragon and the Stark direwolf. The only question is, what sort of cake to make with each? We’ve always thought a red velvet cake would work very well for the Targaryens, but besides the obvious lemon cake we’re at a loss.

(Whatever you bake for World Baking Day, by the by, you’ll look pretty expert at it rocking one of these mitten and apron sets while you’re at it!)

Over at the “Not a Blog”—which will soon be retired in preference to a new blog, we’re told—George R.R. Martin has taken the time to discuss the recent news that HBO has four pilot scripts in development for a potential successor to Game of Thrones. George’s post is very illuminating, clarifying some details and providing a few hints, as well as a couple of clear and categorical responses.

It’s worth reading, but below are some key points:

The Hollywood Reporter has reported that SyFy, the SF/F genre television specialist which has had a rather colorful repetoire of original programming over the years (B-movies such as Sharknado, paranormal “reality” series such as Ghost Hunters, dramas such as Battlestar Galactica and The Magicians), has moved to adapt George R.R. Martin’s award-winning horror-tinged science fiction novella, “Nightflyers”, into a television series.

Martin’s overall development deal with HBO means that he will not be involved in developing or producing the series. Instead, Jeff Buhler (writer for the remake of Jacob’s Ladder currently in post-production) will write the initial script and act as executive producer. Buhler will be joined by a number of others noted in the article from THR, including Robert Jaffe—who wrote the adaption for the 1987 film based on GRRM’s novella—as a producer.

As usual, James Hibberd at EW gets the big scoop. We’ve talked before about HBO’s executives confirming that they’re interested in exploring the A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones universe after the series is done, but this is the very first concrete news regarding it. Per Hibberd,

Also, Hibberd confirms Benioff and Weiss will be executive producers on any eventual show(s). It’s not exactly a surprise, however, given that they brought the property to HBO in the first place, so they would retain a stake. It’s pretty clear they will not be showrunners, however.

Some further thoughts below.

HBO has blasted out fifteen new images from the forthcoming 7th season of Game of Thrones, covering a range of the show’s key characters, many of them in their new, black-is-back fashions ahead of what’s likely to be a dark season. You can see the images in our gallery, but here’s a couple of examples to whet the appetite:

Game of Thrones returns to screens on July 16 in the US, July 17 in Europe.

HBO has just released the official season 7 promo for Game of Thrones. See it below:

The song, for those wondering, seems to be “Sit Down”, originally recorded by James; sounds like their version as well, but it may be a cover.

Artist Magali Villeneuve (of 2016 calendar fame) reminded us via a tweet that A Song of Ice and Fire is returning to comics form, with Dynamite Entertainment publishing the first issue in their A Clash of Kings adaptation on June 7 There’s a number of covers for that first issue, but we’ll share Magali’s alternate cover first, featuring her take on Stannis Baratheon and his daughter Princess Shireen:

According to the Previews solicitation, the comic is being adapted by writer Landry Quinn Walker with art by Mel Rubi.

Other covers are provided by Mike S. Miller (familiar to fans for his work on the Dunk & Egg adaptations), Marc Simonetti (well-known to ASoIaF fans thanks to his many covers for foreign editions, as well as his calendar and contributions to The World of Ice and Fire, and Rubi; we’ll show them below:

Miniature gaming fans will be excited by this: Game publisher CMON Limited and Dark Sword Miniatures have teamed up to produce an A Song of Ice and Fire tabletop miniatures game.

Per CMON Limited’s press release, the game will be funded in part through Kickstarter starting Q3, with retail expansions following the publication of the game. We’ll share the full press release below, but we did some digging around on gaming forums and came across two very useful videos from the GAMA trade show where enthusiasts learned more about the game directly from CMON Limited’s team… as well as getting some glimpses of some of the pretty great-looking artwork and sculptures that the game will include.

The Game of Thrones panel at SXSW, featuring producers Benioff and Weiss, as well as actresses Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, has revealed a few tidbits of news as reported by EW.

The most notable items, in my view, are that Benioff and Weiss have indicated that the final season of the series will be only 6 episodes long (although one wonders what odds one or more of those episodes will run long), and that they have no plans of being involved in any Game of Thrones spin-off or prequel project HBO may come up with. Also, this upcoming season will feature a cameo from musician Ed Sheeran, who happens to be a huge fan of the show as you can see in the video below.

While Linda and I were out speaking about The World of Ice and Fire at Gothenburg’s city library, HBO finally revealed the premiere date of season 7 of Game of Thrones: July 16th. And with that reveal, they also launched the first lengthy teaser, titled “Sigils” for its extensive use of the heraldic beasts and objects of the Seven Kingdoms.

This follows after the recent reveal of the Season 7 poster, via Entertainment Weekly. You can find the (brief) press release from HBO below!

Over at George R.R. Martin’s “Not A Blog”, faithful minion Raya revealed the artist behind this summer’s forthcoming the A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar, as well as an image of the cover of the calendar featuring Victarion Grejoy in his plate armor and kraken helm.

The artist, Eric Velhagen—do check out his personal site with its extensive gallery!—has been twice nominated for the Chesley Awards, the premiere awards for the SF&F genre, and has been published in the prestigious Spectrum series of art books.

We also have some hints of the subjects Velhagen will be depicting in the calendar, courtesy of Random House:

The A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar is due to be published July 18th.

Montegrappa, one of the oldest manufacturers of pens in Italy, has quietly released a line of Game of Thrones pens that are quite gorgeous. Drawing inspiration from four of the families—Baratheon, Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen—the series of pens feature three variants: ballpoint, rollerball, and fountain.

Montegrappa’s pens are currently available on some specialty sites, while their own e-commercse store is only available for those who reside in Italy. We noticed, when taking a look there, that the fountain pens are out of stock. We double-checked with HBO and they inform us that Montegrappa will have more available by the end of the month, which means those specialty retailers out there who currently don’t have them in stock will be able to order them in. No word as of yet whether they will be appearing at the HBO Store, but we’ll keep fans posted.

Here’s the full details from Montegrappa, below: