The Dragon Demands

I don't think Elio would allow that.

The reddit thread broadly matches the extremely detailed spoiler outline of season 1 that was leaked to the hardcore spies months ago. MONTHS ago. It got a few details wrong though: i.e. Rhaenyra clearly isn't cut in the "face" because we see her face in the new trailer; she gets slashed in the arm. A few of the minor details here and there are incorrect. It's like an imperfect copy of the big spoiler leak pack that has been circulating among the spy community for months. One difference that was just this guy reading into it: he says "it sounds like Aegon abuses Helaena"....it's more like it's clear that he ignores her because they were forced to marry as per Valyrian tradition, but that she really doesn't care because she was forced into it too. Some sort of line about "it's okay, he mostly ignores me" - she means that honestly, she's happy he pretty much leaves her to her own interests. Pretty much as in the books.

That's not what we've heard, and I know people who have been making spy reports for 2 years that turned out to be accurate. The borders ebb and flow with the centuries. It's like saying "but that guy from southern France is part-Spanish!"....well....that's not particularly implausible...

Kurt Egyiawan as Grand Maester Orwyle https://loucoulson.co.uk/talent/kurt-egyiawan#cv They cast a black actor: maybe he's supposed to be from Driftmark? Perhaps a minor Velaryon cousin? Books say he was of noble birth.

Hey, a couple new scans came out from the Empire magazine interview. Nothing much new in terms of images so far, only one thing caught my eye - a heraldry design at the tournament I don't recognize: https://preview.redd.it/wp4bh68phof91.jpg?width=1525&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd2893c3e023d76a7120e74f4796cfc4f499e76d It looks like a brown diamond on a yellow field. What could it be? @Ran

Well…we can only hope (shrug)

Oh I'll talk more about this later but it's not a spoiler or leak it's just... I talked to one freelancer journalist I know (and then some others who said the same thing)....who said that they're having a REALLY hard time pitching articles to mainstream TV news sites about House of the Dragon. NOT even "comparisons with Game of Thrones" or "what went wrong with Game of Thrones" articles. I'm talking basic, "hey, can we do a character profile article on Rhaenyra and Alicent to introduce new viewers?"....they're getting shot down. News sites are doing the most simplistic, bare-bones reporting on "there's a show called House of the Dragon" and then copy-pasting the same description template, but - for the most part - putting no effort into it. MOST of them expect House of the Dragon to fail, and have decided there's no interest in it....even though, objectively, there are analytics showing that say, IMDb's site traffic rankings officially listed it as the most anticipated new show of the year, OVER Lord of the Rings prequel, Sandman, or Star Wars/Marvel projects. Simply looking at GOOGLE TRENDS, a readily available tool, there are charts showing how much more it's being searched online than those other shows. Nonetheless, MOST mainstream news sites are...still so bitter about Game of Thrones that they "rage-quit". Which is annoying for us: They wouldn't report on how the show was going bad from Season 5 onwards, BRUSHED OFF our complaints about the Season 5 abandoning the books....then when Season 8 was rock bottom bad....they didn't turn around and go "let's analyze what went wrong". These aren't people who analyze things - if they did, they wouldn't have stayed hyped after Season 5 and ignored our warnings and complaints. YES there are a few exceptions with news sites that have relationships with HBO like Entertainment Weekly or Hollywood Reporter but....most aren't promoting this at all. It's an odd mirror of how no one wanted to report on Game of Thrones Season 1 in the leadup to it in 2011, because it's "just a silly fantasy show". These conversations I had with reporters about the behind the scenes bias against House of the Dragon were....were sobering. Made me realize how much of an uphill battle this show has.

Hey, I was out picking up the new Wild Cards comic book in Manhattan and I saw this video billboard ad for House of the Dragon (with Empire State Building in background)

Oh, for this interested about the prophecy leak stuff, I put together this collection of clips from GRRM, the cast at San Diego Comic-Con, and the Extended Full Trailer released at SDCC, plus the leak as I reported it a month ago edited in for 2 minutes at the end (all the other stuff lines up with it):

What if GRRM was planning this for years?

I've been thinking about what our schedule will look like in the next year or two: Production time is much longer now because they're not rushing to crank out one season per year to compete for Emmys (even GoT's final seasons simply could not keep up with that pace). Thus we have to face the major adjustment of a year and a half between seasons. House of the Dragon Season 1's finale is October 23, and we've heard no news of Season 2 casting yet, much less filming, so the earliest we're looking at for the Season 2 premiere is Spring 2024 (April/May). Thinking on that....let's say they greenlight filming on Season 2 right after strong ratings for the premiere, or at least by October. Casting process takes time, though it may already be ongoing behind the scenes. Then again, casting for Season 2 will be a lot less intensive than casting for Season 1, with a months-long hunt for the series leads. Seems possible that they'd cast over "winter" and start filming again by "spring to summer" (let's say "April", as this is what they did last time). House of the Dragon Season 1 began filming in April and finished by December...or would have, if not for COVID delays (they had "two weeks of material left to film" from December to mid-February, because they kept having to stop for COVID cases). Let's generously call this "8 months of active on-location filming". Maybe 4 months of post-production work. It COULD be done by late May, but there's a non-zero chance it might take until July like Season 7 did. There are many X-factors due to ongoing supply chain issues, various delays that crop up, the unknown unknowns, etc. This is pure conjecture, but at the rate he's been going, I think GRRM can't come out with the Winds of Winter earlier than Christmas 2023 to spring 2024. Safe to say it won't come out before Season 2, though possibly near the same time. "Calendar year 2023" there's no new content. But then we consider the Blu-ray release: all this time, I subconsciously assumed "and then we'll go over the Blu-ray contents over Christmas break"....because we're used to SPRING premieres. I googled around and it typically takes about five months after a show's season finale for a Blu-ray to come out. GoT Season 7 was an exception, it was a Summer premiere....but it was a shorter season than normal, high priority, they managed to push it out by December, in four months. Usually they'd come out in November for the Spring premieres, just in time for Black Friday weekend after Thanksgiving in the USA. Recently, Succession Season 3 finale was December 2021 and came out on Blu-ray in May 2022. So we're looking at a turnaround time of five months - ongoing supply chain issues may also be a factor. But there's no way in hell that HotD Season 1, with a finale the last week of October, is going on Blu-ray in two months, to be out by Christmas. This honestly never occurred to me before. So it seems likely we'll get the House of the Dragon Season 1 Blu-ray set in March 2023. This will have a LOT of information on it because it's an entirely new series - think of how important all the featurettes were in the Game of Thrones Season 1 Blu-ray set. I'd say we'd get one month of heavy analysis discussion out of that, maybe even tapering off to two months. Think March to May, we're going over the Blu-ray stuff. While multiple spinoff projects are in development, none of the live-action ones have been greenlit until HotD Season 1 does well, they'd need to do casting and filming, so it's doubtful any other spinoffs would be out in Calendar year 2023. No new text based books, only calendars and artbooks....what's the working title for that "collection of character bios" Elio & Linda are working on, and the projected release date? (World of Ice & Fire was originally going to be a collection of bios, not unlike character profiles on the World of Ice & Fire app, but moreso). So the schedule we're looking at is: August 21 - October 23: live premieres of House of the Dragon Season 1 It's difficult to predict how much lingering post-season discussion we'll get out of it, but I would think a lot of heavy activity at least through the end of Christmas break. As the world catches up, viewers who were afraid to come back watch through word of mouth; people who DID NOT prepare for this prequel pick up Fire & Blood. Oh...and a few people who will even buy Fire & Blood for Christmas and actually read it. But "processing Season 1" could take us through mid-January, end of Christmas break. We SHOULD start getting some casting info for Season 2 by January to March, if not earlier. Season 2 filming should start up around April. If it's anything like Season 1...there was intense exterior filming in April to May and September to November, but a lull in the summer months of June to August. The Season 1 Blu-ray set should come out around March 2023, and could generously provide us with maybe one to two months of hardcore analysis. IF - big "if" - their filming schedule is similar to Season 1...we might be facing a but of a slump from June to August of next year. But then filming news would pick up again in Autumn (early September through early December). If we're looking at an April premiere....when did we usually start seeing teasers for the new seasons? Three months before? By December we'd be close enough to Season 2 that "season 2 speculation and promos" would once again be buzz-worthy and fuel online discussion. Conclusion: June-July-August of next year might be a lull in news, though it would be a great chance to finally do a line by line slow re-read of Fire & Blood, reading the print off it to speculate on Season 2 down to minute details. Though I intend to start on that as soon as we've "finished analyzing Season 1" ----then again with a new show, season 1 analysis takes much longer, that might extend beyond January up to the Blu-ray release itself. That's a problem you want to have. In which case, might not get back to hardcore Fire & Blood analysis until June. Season 2 probably won't go beyond the next two chapters after that, but they're dense. But that is THE long-term "project" for next year: heavy book re-reading....around the Summer.

He was in the subtitles...either they renamed him back, or IMDB made a mistake (they've been known to make mistakes)....and the COPYRIGHT was for "Rickard Stark"....but I honestly don't know. I'll keep an eye on this one.

David Hounslow cast as "Lord Rickon Stark": https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0396577/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t38

Which is what I’ve been saying!

Lies and slander. These salacious allegations of impropriety. You know better than to trust Mushroom's account.

Hey I don't want to be...."that guy", jumping on his typos and such. We've all been writing under a deadline.

Well...I don't think he was "actively trying" to obscure anything, just that he might have heard it wrong. I do recognize the distinction.

Next weekend is San Diego Comic Con!!

oh crud I was waiting for him to finish to make one big combined report, ack

Oh, Eve Best is perfect as Rhaenys:

Yeah I wonder what Emma meant by that: sort of out of context, just remarked "Game of Thrones couldn't have been made today"...in reference to what exactly? What did Emma say before that? I mean I don't like what D&D did, but even I'm hesitant to quote that or read into it. I mean purely from a production standpoint though...it is WEIRD that they made a major Emmy-level show without female writers or directors for its last five out of eight seasons...and what's weirder is that the media outlets were too spineless to even remark on it. Media outlets who normally complain about that kind of thing.

Oh I know, I know, but still...kind of shows "they think of Rhaenyra as a bit more Arya-like than Cersei-like, at least in her youth"

Ma'am, they shouldn't be surprised: it is well known how hot-blooded the Dornish are...

Steve Toussaint respectfully said he didn't: and I fully support this, because: 1 - Conleth Hill (Varys) remarked in the Season 8 DVD commentary that numerous cast members didn't read the books but would simply claim they did when asked in interviews, just to brush off the question. He felt it was very dishonest. Julian Glover was one of the few who openly said he didn't, but had an articulated response: that in his 40+ year career, he officially has a rule that he won't read source material when doing an adaptation - he philosophically believes that this is the job of the screenwriter and doesn't want to second guess them. So fine, be believes that and is willing to stand by it - Conleth Hill was instead disgusted with the cowardice and dishonesty of the MANY cast members who just pretended they read the books. 2 - ....The Dance of the Dragons, more than any other prequel era, has the "unreliable narrator" element at such high levels, the whole Roshomon thing, that it's probably advisable for cast members NOT to read it. Condal's version is allegedly the "real" version that the rival accounts then distorted. So why make Toussaint read Fire & Blood, if it says "our sources diverge: Corlys may or may not have had Harwin Strong killed but we don't know the truth"? And that's not even touching the question of "who was the 'real' Rhaenyra? Behind all these biased historical sources?" ---- I really wouldn't be upset about whether they read the books or not, so long as they take the TV role seriously and read the SCRIPTS attentively.