Westeros

After a very long absence from recording new videos at our Youtube channel, we’ve finally mustered time to resume! We’ve decided to start off with a series of videos discussing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and intend to have about four videos in total. The first video we released a couple of weeks ago, and it focuses on the first of the Dunk & Egg stories, “The Hedge Knight”:

And after a bit of a delay, we’ve just published our latest video, focused on “The Sworn Sword”:

Courtesy of HBO and HBO UK, we’ve received copies of the new Steelbook collections of Season 1 Season 2 of Game of Thrones.

Besides a lovely new packaging inspired by the famed opening credits of the series (the first two sets feature a Stark-themed Winterfell and a Lannister-themed King’s Landing, and the next two sets will feature the Twins and the Wall when they are released; it’s worth noting that the central sigils also double as refrigerator magnets!), the chief draw is that the set will feature a brand new audio mix utilizing Dolby’s Atmos techology. This is an evolution from things like Dolby TrueHD, taking the audio experience in some very interesting directions. Although Atmos is quite new, and it may take awhile for there to be wide use of Atmos-capable speakers (particularly upwards-firing speakers designed to bounce sound off a ceiling to help create verticality, which spare home theater enthusiasts the cost and difficulty of mounting speakers on the ceiling), it’s worth noting that the Bluray of course also works with TrueHD and will play just fine on non-Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 audio systems.

At last, the Android version of the A World of Ice and Fire app, published by Random House as the official reference app for the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, is finally available in all international Google Play stores! Linda and I have worked with Random House, filling it with much of its content (besides our entries, there’s also a good deal of art!). And on top of all that, the app contains a number of the chapters from The Winds of Winter which George R.R. Martin has previously revealed to the public.

The Android version of the app is named “Game of Thrones Guide” for search engine reasons, but it’s the same app as the iOs A World of Ice and Fire, simply on a different platform. Downloading it is free, and includes the TWoW samples, but additional content covering all the books in the series are an in-app purchase. Do give it a look!

UPDATE: Despite our understanding that it is rolling out globally, and not just in the U.S. and a few other areas, it seems it’s not actually out everywhere just yet. At least one report from India of it being unavailable there. We’re checking with Random House about the timeline to see it rolled out everywhere, but we will say we were reminded of this fact because it was now available in Sweden where it hadn’t been before.

Telltale Games has announced a November 17th release date for the final episode in their Game of Thrones adventure series, and to mark the occasion Telltales has made the first episode free on the iOs platform, as well as Android, XBox, and Playstation platforms. Telltale Games notes on their official blog that this final episode, titled “The Ice Dragon”, will be the first Telltale Games episodic installment recieving a same-day release on all available platforms; previous installments tended to role out over two or three days.

Finally, Telltale has put together a video featuring some of the Game of Thrones cast members—specifically Emilia Clarke, Natalie Dormer, and Iwan Rheon—who’ve lent their voices to the game:

For those interested in the wider topic of fictional universes and the fans that adore them, we’d be remiss not to note that BBC Radio 4’s Ben Hammersley leads a program on that very topic. Among the universes? That of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, of course, and Linda and I are quoted therein. For those who’d prefer to read the gist of it all, however, the BBC Magazine has a brief piece drawn from the radio program.

We’re told that a somewhat longer version of the program may appear down the road, as it was made up of a number of long interviews (I believe ours ran for about an hour in total).

As revealed by George R.R. Martin at his “Not a Blog” site, his award-winning novella “The Skin Trade” has been optioned by Cinemax—sister company of HBO—and a pilot script is being written by writer and producer Kalinda Vazquez. Vazquez’s experience includes working as a staff writer on Prison Break, and as a producer on shows such as Nikita and Once Upon a Time. “The Skin Trade” is a well-regarded horror novella by Martin, featuring a cowardly werewolf and a no-nonsense detective who are drawn into a supernatural investigation. As Martin remarks, there always seemed to be potential for a TV series in the basic concept, and he notes that the creation of his Doorways pilot was an unexpected result of his pitching “The Skin Trade” as a TV show back when he was a screenwriter for television.

Also noteworthy is the fact that this deal with Cinemax is cited as being partly due to the efforts of Mike the Pike Producttions, who optioned the novella almost six years ago. Sometimes it’s a very long road forward for literary properties. As GRRM indicates, it’s no certainty that it will go into production at this time, but it’s a big step forward.

New York Comic Con is presently under way, and it has featured a bevy of notable Game of Thrones content—not least a panel with actors Natalie Dormer, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Finn Jones where they dicussed their roles on their show and offered some hints of what was yet to come. Here’s a video of the proceedings, courtesy of Emergency Awesome:

The convention was also filled with Game of Thrones-licensed memorabilia, figures, and more. Our friends at Dark Horse Comics revealed a number of their upcoming releases, including a resin statue of the Night’s King, a Varys figure, and this extremely impressive limited edition depicting Daenerys and Drogon from season 4. We have a review sample of that particular piece, and the size of Drogon crouched on its base is quite remarkable!

Also featured at the convention were McFarlane Toys, who will be releasing their mini-figure sets next year. These will come in “Blind bags”, meaning that collectors will buy bags containing random figures (or, if they’re really dedicated, they can go for whole cases of figures)—not unlike the Funko blind bags of mini-Pop! figures. However, McFarlane Toys is going beyond this to also create suitabel dioramas where one can display these figures, as with the Iron Throne set, or special add-on sets like the Stark and Lannister banner construction kit. Or this upcoming “Attack on the Wall” diorama, featuring a giant:

A little over a week ago, we had the pleasure of revealing some exclusive artwork from the forthcoming
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms collection compiling the three Dunk & Egg novellas set in the past of Westeros. That book is now set to be released exactly one week from now, on October 6th.

However, we thought we’d note that it’s not just the book-proper that will be available: an audio book is also waiting in the wings. What’s particularly interesting about this one is that the book features a narrator who we believe has never read any of the ASoIaF material previously, the actor Harry Lloyd. Best remembered by Game of Thrones fans for his first season role as Prince Viserys, Lloyd’s a talented actor who has appeared in a number of film and television projects, including Wolf Hall, Manhattan, The Theory of Everything, and more. Linda and I had the pleasure of meeting him and joining him for dinner last year in Stockholm, and we can only say that we know he’ll provide a fantastic performance. Certainly, the preview at Amazon sounds excellent!

This Sunday, the Emmy Awards were handed out, and Game of Thrones (and HBO in general) proved very popular. The show tallied up a total of 12 wins this year at the Emmys, handily breaking the 9 win record set by The West Wing set in 2000. While eight of those awards were in the Creative Arts categories, the show carried four major awards at the Primetime Emmys: Outstanding Supporting Actor for a visibly-surprised Peter Dinklage,  Outstanding Director for David Nutter and “Mother’s Mercy”, Outstanding Writing for David Benioff & Dan Weiss for the same episode, and the big one, Outstanding Drama. Coincidentally, Sunday was also George R.R. Martin’s 67th birthday, so it was quite the present.

Critics and pundits would weigh in on the results, such as Alan Sepinwall for HitFix, James Poniewozik for the NY Times, and Andy Greenwald for Grantland.

Courtesy of Random House, we’re happy to present a few never-before-published examples of Gary Gianni’s artwork for the forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a collection of the three “Dunk & Egg” novellas which introduced fans of A Song of Ice and Fire to the eponymous characters and their adventures in the Targaryen-ruled Seven Kingdoms almost a century prior to the events of the novels.

Gary Gianni needs very little introduction for anyone familiar with comics or SF/F illustration, but suffice it to say he’s one of the great illustrators working today, famous for his renditions of characters such as Solomon Kane and Conan the Barbarian from the oeuvre of Robert E. Howard, as well as his well-known eight-year run on the venerable Prince Valiant comic strip. He also provided the art the 2014 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar. For A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Gianni actually insisted on producing a tremendous number of illustrations rather than just doing one or two per story, with the end result being over 160 new pieces of art. By way of comparison, our own The World of Ice and Fire had over 170 images! You can see a selection of the art for the book below:

For those keeping track, Game of Thrones has added to its bevy of Creative Arts Emmys: nominated fo 16 awards, it took home 8 of them. Bear in mind, in some of those categories there were several Game of Thrones entries, most notably the Cinematography in a Single-Camera Series category which featured six nominees, four of which were from Game of Thrones (HBO sister show Boardwalk Empire‘s season 5 premiere actually won there, however).

This continues the show’s tremendous run in creative arts and production categories, which is understandable given both the expense, the complexity, and the terrific amount of talent involved behind-the-scenes in producing the visuals, effects, stunts, and more. With the 2015 Emmys, the show has been nominated for 88 awards so far, of which it has won 19 so far. More Emmys are pending for the Primetime Emmy awards airing on the 20th, while FXX will broadcast last week’s Creative Arts Emmys on the 19th.

For the full list of Emmy nominees, see here.

The publisher of the A Song of Ice and Fire series in Spain, Alejo Cuervo (who is also an editor, bookseller, and a genuine lynchpin of SF/F fandom in that country) caused a bit of a stir when remarks he made in an interview made the rounds. In brief, the news reports indicated he had “confirmed” the publication of The Winds of Winter in 2016. However, it bears noting that his actual words indicate something different: that the intention or plan is to publish it in 2016, but then he admits that there’s the possibility that something unexpected (a meteorite, in his example) could happen to prevent it from happening.
This is not, exactly, news: George R.R. Martin’s reduction of his touring schedule and various statements he has made indicate that he, too, is hoping to finish the book for release next year. It’s no shock that plans at publishing houses the world over are being formulated with this aim in mind. But it bears repeating that while optimism is a good thing, the fact is that until the book is actually finished, no one can give a confirmed publication date for the book. When will we know it’s done? GRRM will tell us so.

Until then, stay optimistic, but don’t take a 2016 date as being set in stone. The book needs to be done first, and right now it isn’t done.

On a related note, Alejo invited us to Barcelona to present The World of Ice and Fire in the Gigamesh store (one of the finest SF/F bookstores in Europe) and is Osuna, and we had some terrific conversations with him. Frankly, if the Locus Awards were genuinely a global award, Alejo and his Gigamesh publishing company could well be considered among the best genre publishers around. We were amazingly impressed by the genuine devotion to producing (or bringing into translation) the best science fiction and fantasy available, and the stories of Alejo Cuervo’s efforts to forward fandom and the genre in Spain were eye-opening. We’ve been swamped of late, but one of the first videos we plan to make when we get back into it will be about our journies this past year promotiong The World of Ice and Fire, and we’ll have a lot to say about Alejo, Gigamesh, Barcelona, and Osuna.

As Variety reports, the venerable Swedish actor Max von Sydow—the list of credits for the actor is very long indeed—is taking over the “three-eyed raven” role originated in the fourth season by Struan Rodger. As Variety notes, much like the Ian McShane casting, this role is relatively brief in screen time, but it will be important—in his case, Sydow’s role will be described as a “major” one.

Given that Isaac Hempstead Wright has admitted he’d be back for season 6 after a 1 season hiatus, it looks like we’ll be seeing how Bran has gotten along beneath the weirwood with his new mentor.

Like the title says, EW has the exclusive revealing that Ian McShane—best known for his role as Al Swearengen in Deadwood (one of the finest TV shows ever made, by the by)—will be joining the cast for season 6 in a role described by EW as having a “relatively small amount of screen-time during the season” but that the ” character is of key importance.”

Let the speculation begin.

The news ran wild last night with the report from the Television Critics’ Association summer session panel where HBO executive Michael Lombardo spoke about Game of Thrones and remarked the following:

On top of that, when asked about potential prequels, Lombardo expressed strong willingness to further delve into the Game of Thrones story once the main series was done.