The Dragon Demands

They’re filming in only two months - I wonder if any of the old contacts in Northern Ireland have noticed activity starting up again: set builders, extras, horse rental, etc

Yeah but Davos uses a Brummie accent, from northeast England

Seems probable that we're getting the full trailer end of next week - presented by JB Perette of WBD's Video Game division: 

https://seriesmania.com/forum/en/fiche/keynote-jb-perette-president-and-ceo-of-global-streaming-and-games-warner-bros-discovery/

Thursday March 21 from 15:30 to 16:00 GMT (for me that's 11:30 to 12 noon EST)

The production codename for The Hedge Knight is 'Sweetfoot', named after Dunk's horse

Season 2 reshoots have ended on schedule and without incident. No new casting leaks during these reshoots, unfortunately.

Seeing a lot of images on social media this week that Ukraine’s mud season has begun in earnest. That should pause any advances on the main front until around the start of May - have there been any solid dates predicted for mud season this year?

Quote

Russia is sacrificing the equivalent adult male population of a small city, in order to capture ruins.  That is madness.

No amount of sanctions will ever truly affect Russia because we fundamentally can’t afford the disruption to the global economy caused by stopping all their oil exports. So they’re not going to run out of oil money.

But there’s a finite number of able-bodied men. You can fudge the numbers - use imprisoned political dissidents as cannon fodder - but sooner or later you’re going to hit the ceiling. Particularly in a country with a low birth rate the past three decades of the post Soviet era.

Putin is willing to expend more men though, being an autocrat. But another factor is they already had LABOR shortages due to the low birth rate. If they draft more able bodied men the economy will suffer even more. And that’s assuming they take time to train conscripts.

Sweden has officially joined NATO.

Good news: if there’s one thing I detest, it’s neutrality.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68506223

In the WBD earnings call today, David Zaslav said they aim for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms to premiere in LATE 2025. Up to now I thought it would be Summer.

https://tvline.com/news/game-of-thrones-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms-season-1-release-date-hbo-max-1235172818/

Updated production info: filming June 3rd https://redanianintelligence.com/2024/01/05/a-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms-aka-dunk-egg-series-gets-a-schedule-update/

https://productionlist.com/production/the-hedge-knight/

This was heavily discussed at the time: rewrites and reshoots during filming are a normal and indeed essential part of the process. The strike happened just as filming began, when the scripts were “done” but they couldn’t do concurrent rewrites. Even at the time, HBO acknowledged “we’ll need a month of reshoots at some point after the strike is over”. 

2 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Do we know the reason for the reshoots?

Writers strike

Turns out the reshoots are bigger than we thought, will involve battle scenes, and didn’t even start yet!

We thought filming would begin on February 1; instead filming begins March 1st and will last one month;

6 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Agreed on the whole “seeing dead people” - could be spirit world or hallucinations; heck, however many days of night all the time would drive me a bit batty.

The symbol, though, that was explained - as a hunter warning signal. Makes sense, but a bit dramatic in how it was hyped up in the first place. Then again, it’s a drama / mystery, so it meets expectations, IMO.

Well it’s an ancient symbol they’ve come to USE as a warning sign for thin ice

I think Aegon I was a lot like Rhaegar: burdened by prophecy, brooding and aloof. Not unlike so called “soft boy” Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides. For some reason women seem to like this more than his military prowess.

“Back to basics”?

I’ve been catching up on this over Xmas break: season 2 drastically better than season one. Invented second foundation storyline is weak. But if they were all as good as episode four of season 2 it could have been great ( just watched that; focuses purely on Bel Riose and Hober Mallow storylines)

The story of the books kind of wraps up after the Mule though

I’ve watched the four current episodes and loved it. Story is a bit thin, but presentable; good actors, but must of all the cinematography is amazing. It’s more of a “mood” show than complex plot, but still makes for good horror.

On 1/24/2024 at 7:52 AM, Ran said:

My read as well. She's an abrasive person, she knows her shit, but I don't think she's a badass.

behind the scenes videos consistently describe her as "awful" but "we'll show why" (she lost her son)

Turns out they actually film in Iceland, because it’s too difficult to actually go to that latitude in Alaska - no road access.

Matt Smith did a recent podcast interview: when asked when HotD season 2 is coming out, he said “August”

….thats what’s trending on social media anyway. The relevant clip is in this Tweet: 

What he actually said was “…uh, August? I think? Summer.” — which isn’t exactly confirmation.

@Ran

They didn't start casting during the strike, we only saw casting sheets AFTER it ended

I think it's more that they didn't factor in the delays due to the writers' guild strike: i mean if the strike ended in September I didn't think they had the time to finish the remaining five scripts in time for March.

Great that they're returning to Northern Ireland after how HBO abandoned them (the old HBO, who ignored all their warnings about "make more than one pilot because if the first one fails we can't afford to wait around for the next one so we'll lose our contract)

In my own mental calculus I already thought Dunk & Egg couldn't possibly come by late 2024, this just confirms that. 

I always thought it would be out by Summer 2025...small chance of Spring 2025.  Due to the ripple effect of the strikes; all those backlogged shows will pile up in Spring 2025 - Euphoria Season 3 comes back that Spring and they probably don't want to double up with that and other shows. Also Emmy politics come into consideration (the Emmy cutoff is between Spring and Summer. 

But another factor is that Orsi said they want to release it in 3 consecutive years, i.e. every 12 months, and a consistent Summer release is the only one that doesn't overlap with House of the Dragon (well, not until Season 5), because HotD is bigger and takes a full year and a half turnaround between seasons. I think it looks like:

• 2024, Summer: House of the Dragon Season 2
• 2025, Summer: Dunk & Egg Season 1
• 2026, Spring: HotD Season 3
• 2026, Summer: Dunk & Egg Season 2
• 2027, Summer: Dunk & Egg Season 3
• 2027, Fall: HotD Season 4

To cut to the conclusion:

• We've pretty much confirmed the "action element" of the finale will be the Battle of Red Fork.
• ...I'm starting to suspect - but can't confirm - that Alicent will come to Dragonstone in the finale to propose that they Partition Westeros to avoid more bloodshed - thus serving as the big "face to face acting element" of the finale, though it's ultimately rejected (and actually based on a moment in the book but moved around). 

Season 2 has slowed the pace of adaptation, well beyond even my hopes as a book fan, so rather than racing to "the cool stuff!" of big battles at the end of the story they're taking time to round out the secondary characters and subplots. Yes, this means Daeron and even Nettles probably aren't in Season 2...simply because they won't reach that part of the story yet. We do know that the Sowing of the Dragonseeds STARTS in the second to last episode....but now it seems more like a "process" that spans multiple episodes, and Nettles might not show up until the Season 3 premiere. Despite the insistence of clickbaiters, we don't even think the Battle of the Gullet happens this season....NOR the absurd claims that "they'll just have the fall of King's Landing before the Gullet!"....no, there's no indications they're doing the fall of KL either. Clickbaiters thought that if they just repeated a lie enough times it would become belief and become fact: "Gullet is this Season!" "Fall of KL is this season!".....they're holdovers from the Seasons 5 through 8 crowd who liked empty theorization more than hard facts. 

We're reasonably sure, based on spy photos and casting reports, that the Battle of Red Fork will happen in episode 8 - that's the "action element" of the finale, introducing the cliffhanger that the main phase of the war has begun in earnest, with the main army of the Westerlands invading the Riverlands (and presumably, Aemond & Criston's KL army invading from the east). 

....much more speculative....but given that a TV show feels the need to have big "face to face acting scenes" which in books were done by letter-raven....there are rumors - not confirmed to me - that Alicent is on Dragonstone in the finale. Given that nothing else indicates the fall of KL is this season (Alicent wouldn't be captured)......I have the lingering suspicion that this will be a peace embassy that doesn't work. In the aftermath of Rook's Rest, they send out peace feelers again: "maybe we should stop before this escalates into a full scale total war across the entire continent?".....perhaps drawing inspiration from a slightly later pointi n the book, AFTER the fall of KL but after the blacks' offensives have stalled when their money runs out...when the (imprisoned) Alicent proposes "why not just Partition Westeros into two kingdoms north and south of the Blackwater?"  This IS a debate that happens in the book, but Rhaenyra shoots it down. My suspicion is that in order to create big "face to fact acting scenes" to serve as the acting side of the Season 2 finale, they'll move this around, have Alicent come to Dragonstone to propose this, they have a big debate but ultimately reject it (as we now secretly know....Rhaenyra's motivated by the prophecy to keep the realm united, so she'd never agree to this; whereas Eustace would say she rejected it out of scorn). 

...checking....here's Alicent's "Two State Solution" for Westeros, as it were, after the Fall of King's Landing (which the Blacks assumed would end the war but didn't, and their offensives elsewhere have stalled):
 

Quote

Fearing for her sons, Queen Alicent went to the Iron Throne upon her knees, to plead for peace. This time the Queen in Chains put forth the notion that the realm might be divided; Rhaenyra would keep King’s Landing and the crownlands, the North, the Vale of Arryn, all the lands watered by the Trident, and the isles. To Aegon II would go the stormlands, the westerlands, and the Reach, to be ruled from Oldtown.

Rhaenyra rejected her stepmother’s proposal with scorn. “Your sons might have had places of honor at my court if they had kept faith,” Her Grace declared, “but they sought to rob me of my birthright, and the blood of my sweet sons is on their hands.”

Basically imagine that but shifted around a bit chronologically, to "the aftermath of Rook's Rest, but right before the Greens launch their main offensives into the Riverlands and Reach, Alicent makes one last desperate proposal to avoid the upcoming bloodbath for both sides". 

That's just a theory though - the people claiming these rumors about Alicent have been reliable in the past but wouldn't go into more detail, so I'm left to guess. But the other part, the action part, we know that from spy photos and casting sheets: Battle of Red Fork is in the finale.