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HBO Announces Production Begins on House of the Dragon


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3 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I hope they don’t drop Harwin. I don’t think the kids being Criston’s would work, since he turns on her so dramatically. Them continuing their affair after her marriage to Laenor would sort of negate that. 

True enough, it wouldn't work that well with Criston being the father of the children. But the fall-out could be over something or somebody else - Daemon, say.

But if they wanted to cut Harwin the way to go would be to make Laenor's children Daemon's children. That could work easily enough.

The reason why it could make sense to cut Harwin is that it would be rather crowded in Rhaenyra's bedchamber if we had Criston and Laenor and Harwin and Daemon there.

And if we have Laenor then we should also get some awkward sex scenes between the spouses - them trying to father children somehow and it not working out.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

But if they wanted to cut Harwin the way to go would be to make Laenor's children Daemon's children. That could work easily enough.

 

Then how would all three have brown hair and eyes? 

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

The reason why it could make sense to cut Harwin is that it would be rather crowded in Rhaenyra's bedchamber if we had Criston and Laenor and Harwin and Daemon there.

 

Her bed would have to be ten feet wide and twenty long. 

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@Ran

Shocking news came out yesterday when AT&T announced that they're divesting WarnerMedia by merging it with Discovery+

WarnerMedia's CEO Jason Kilar was totally out of the loop on this and is expected to resign, leaving Discovery CEO David Zaslav in charge of the new combined company. AT&T did a similar thing with DirectTV, which they also bought up but it then didn't perform well: "divesting" it means...essentially, AT&T retains a 70% stake in the new company, while 30% went to private investor shareholders (for DirectTV); 30% of the new company will be owned by Discovery execs.  AT&T made a LOT of debt, most indebted company in the world, buying up Time Warner to try to turn it into a big competitor with Netflix, Disney, Amazon.

The idea was for AT&T to bundle HBO Max with their internet service....but Amazon and Disney did basically the same thing through shared deals with Verizon and T-Mobile, without the need for any of them to go through mega-mergers.

Most industry reporters on this since yesterday say that while this is a failure for the current executives that will leave AT&T and WarnerMedia, this might actually be a positive thing for consumers. In summary:

  • Kilar, former head of Hulu, was unpopular as more Silicon Valley type than old school entertainment insider; while he did kick out all the morons who let Benioff & Weiss happen at HBO (Richard Plepler and his regime), he ruffled so many feathers that few were willing to work with him again. Kilar pushed for the same day streaming release on WB films during the pandemic - whether this was a good choice or not, the high-handed way he did it without consulting movie-makers alienated many of them (i.e. Christopher Nolan on "Tenet").  Now they think Dune will switch back to only theaters by October.
  • The new CEO David Zaslav has a reputation as "the last old school media mogul", who knows how to grease the gears of the internal politics, meetings at gold courses and at his mansion in the Hamptons, etc. Opposite of Kilar. While on the one hand this raises alarm bells because that's what Richard Plepler did....Zaslav also has a reputation as a very "hands on" guy who is very willing to fire people if they thinks they're not doing a good job ---- a marked contrast from Plepler, whose business strategy was OFFICIALLY "I make the content creators happy, exert absolutely no oversight on them, they win Emmy awards, and we make money"....this lack of oversight and just plain resting on the laurels of his predecessor's HBO (coasting along on the glory days of the Chris Albrecht regime), made him a very do-nothing leader (bad analogy: if Plepler was our Aenys and Kilar our Maegor, could Zaslav be our Jaehaerys?)  So maybe Zaslav will be a balance between the two: he's an industry insider who knows how to work with people....who also has a history of hands-on activity and firing people who don't perform well.
  • Zaslav actually has quite a successful track record building up Discovery+, particularly in the international market, buy doing a lot of mergers that brought them many European sports channels. Subscriber base tripled during his tenure.  Another compounded failure of Plepler's strategy of "we pamper Emmy-winners, they win Emmys, we make money" was that it OFFICIALLY ignored the international market.  Yeah, Brazil was the top illegal downloader for Game of Thrones in Season 5 - that's not a funny anecdote, it's a red flag that you NEED to have a LEGAL STREAMING SERVICE there!  And as soon as they belatedly launched HBO Now in Season 7, illegally downloading from Brazil dropped out of the ten ten countries completely!  So Zaslav is a man who understands the importance of the international market expansion (which is specifically how Netflix kicked Plepler's ass in the first place)
  • The merger of WarnerMedia content with Discovery+ content actually makes them quite unique in the broad spectrum of content they control. This isn't just like Disney buying up Fox - Discovery+ doesn't do scripted content, so there isn't any overlap; instead this will be WarnerMedia expanding into new unscripted markets it didn't have a foot in the door previously.  In short, of the top 3 streamers, Netflix has unscripted reality shows but no Sports, Disney+ has sports (ESPN) but no reality shows; neither Netflix nor Amazon really do news broadcasts. WarnerMedia+Discovery would have all of this: WarnerMedia ha scripted content plus news like CNN, while Discovery not only has a lot of unscripted reality shows, but under Zaslav drastically expanded to include many international sports packages (basically everything not-ESPN).  So the new company has a "market diversity" that the others won't. 

In terms of their current subscription numbers:

  • Netflix = 208 million
  • Amazon = 175 million
  • Disney = 104 million (Hulu another 40 m, though overlap)
  • HBO Max = 44 million
  • Peacock = 42 million
  • Paramount+ = 36 million
  • AppleTV+ = 33 million
  • Discovery+ = 15 million

All the second-tier guys below the top 3 are now scrambling for a new round of mega-mergers to compete.  Keeping in mind that a little less than half of Discovery+ subscribers also have HBO Max already, this will push HBO Max past its 50 million subscriber mark well ahead of their original goal of hitting it by 2025. 

Meanwhile, rumor is that in response to this merger, NBCUniversal (Peacock) will try to merge with ViacomCBS (Paramount+).

AppleTV+ isn't going anywhere, as they're supported by the rest of Apple as a whole (maybe 10% of Apple's total business), they're more an attempt by Apple to diversify so they always have that support base. News is that Apple and Amazon are now actively bidding to buy out MGM studios (James Bond franchise, etc.)

How will this affect the Game of Thrones franchise?

....I'm not sure, because our real problem was kicking out all the old boys network that ran the Plepler administration. Zaslav is a different "old boy" who does "actual work".  He DID speak of "Game of Thrones" during these announcements as on the short list of their top properties "we have DC Comics, Game of Thrones, CNN..." etc.  

It might shakeup prequel ideas; will they cancel some pitches? or with this new burst in money, will they greenlight even more, to compete with Star Wars expansion at Disney?

The biggest tangible benefit is that this may result in HBO Max expanding even more quickly into new territories

HBO Max is currently in the USA, but expanding to all of Latin America in June (except Cuba), and by fall 2021, will launch in all European markets HBO has direct access to (Spain & Portugal, Eastern Europe, Nordics, plus the Baltics now).  In Europe they basically don't have access to three regions:  

  1. Sky Atlantic countries (British Isles, Germany, Italy, Austria, etc. in Central Europe)
  2. France
  3. Netherlands

If this means HBO Max has a greater chance of expanding into countries where Discovery+ is already streaming, we could see it spread to the Netherlands very soon....and POSSIBLY give them a stronger hand at negotiating for Sky Atlantic to let them market HBO Max directly to UK, Germany, Italy, etc.

In an unrelated development, France streams HBO through third-party OCS...but their contract runs out next year, meaning its possible HBO Max could spread to France in time for House of the Dragon Season 2.

The real exciting possibility is that Discovery+ already streams in India & Japan.  Game of Thrones got very popular in India after it started airing there in Season 7 (more viewers there than in Australia!), but it's streamed through Disney's Hotstar. In contrast, HBO has very bad streaming deals in Japan, the third parties they license it through don't like promoting it as a result, and thus Game of Thrones is surprisingly not very popular at all yet in Japan - meaning it's a big industrial nation market that's just waiting to be broken in to. 

So if nothing else, this merger may help HBO Max compete internationally, and a healthy HBO Max international presence is good news for the survival and indeed growth of the live-action ASOIAF-verse fanbase.

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6 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

True enough, it wouldn't work that well with Criston being the father of the children. But the fall-out could be over something or somebody else - Daemon, say.

But if they wanted to cut Harwin the way to go would be to make Laenor's children Daemon's children. That could work easily enough.

The reason why it could make sense to cut Harwin is that it would be rather crowded in Rhaenyra's bedchamber if we had Criston and Laenor and Harwin and Daemon there.

And if we have Laenor then we should also get some awkward sex scenes between the spouses - them trying to father children somehow and it not working out.

I think it could be something like this:

Season 1 - Romance with Criston that ends badly when Rhaenyra marries Laenor in the finale

Season 2 - Marriage still isn’t consummated, and Rhaenyra looks to Harwin for comfort. The two are separated at the end of the season after Laenor dies. 

Season 3 - Harwin dies, breaking Rhaenyra’s heart and pushing her towards Daemon, leading to their shotgun wedding. 
 

As we saw on GOT, it’s harder to sustain a war for several seasons than political intrigue. I’m thinking that seasons 4 and 5 will be the war itself, with all the buildup spanning the first three seasons. If both Rhaenyra and Alicent are teenagers in the first season, and are still teens when they start having kids, then they could be in their 40s by the last season; their kids would be old enough to carry out their book arcs, and they wouldn’t have to recast the actresses. 
 

I’m wondering if they’ll cut Joffrey and Rhaena, since they were absent for much of the Dance. Rhaenyra will still have Aegon as an heir, and Daemon will still have a Velaryon daughter. 

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23 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Season 3 - Harwin dies, breaking Rhaenyra’s heart and pushing her towards Daemon, leading to their shotgun wedding. 

What on Earth's a shotgun wedding? What, do they have a bundle of shotguns rather than flowers? Seems a bit dangerous and heavy. 

23 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I’m wondering if they’ll cut Joffrey and Rhaena, since they were absent for much of the Dance. Rhaenyra will still have Aegon as an heir, and Daemon will still have a Velaryon daughter. 

I think they should keep Joffrey to show the impact of Syrax's death on Rhaenyra and a nice shot of the Moon of Madness. They should keep Rhaena too, for the worrying of the Green Council after they hear Morning hatches. 

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We're getting rumors that David Tennant's son Ty Tennant has been cast as Aegon II Targaryen

Allegedly, he updated his Instagram bio that he was working on "House" with a dragon emoji next to it, but deleted it after people caught on to the hint; months ago another actor who allegedly auditioned for the role complained Ty got it, but couldn't confirm.

...and Aegon II's mother Alicent is played by Olivia Cooke, whose first on-screen role was as Christopher Eccleston's daughter.

....has every third British person been on Doctor Who at one time or another?

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4 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

We're getting rumors that David Tennant's son Ty Tennant has been cast as Aegon II Targaryen

Allegedly, he updated his Instagram bio that he was working on "House" with a dragon emoji next to it, but deleted it after people caught on to the hint; months ago another actor who allegedly auditioned for the role complained Ty got it, but couldn't confirm.

...and Aegon II's mother Alicent is played by Olivia Cooke, whose first on-screen role was as Christopher Eccleston's daughter.

....has every third British person been on Doctor Who at one time or another?

If that’s true, then that’s an awful lot of ground to cover in one season. 

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I finally looked at Reddit and saw the pictures of what looks to be Alicent’s sons. I’m disappointed that they’re not spacing the show out more. It seems excessive to have the war last four seasons since, unlike GOT, there aren’t  parallel plot lines to fill up airtime. Maybe the last season will be the Regency. I personally think that Viserys reuniting with Aegon (and saving him, in a way, since he spent his whole life cleaning up after Aegon and his kids) would be a good place to end the show. 
 

Did the internet sleuths ever find out if that guy who looks like Lee Pace is playing Harwin Strong? 

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17 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Simpsons is funny

I've never watched the Simpsons in my entire life. Arrange for a TV, and maybe I'll watch it. After rewatching GoT, of course,  so I can scream at the TV for all the mistakes. And then arrange for a new TV after I throw a baseball through the TV because they killed Rhaegal. In a very unrealistic way, I might add. 

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12 minutes ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

I've never watched the Simpsons in my entire life. Arrange for a TV, and maybe I'll watch it. After rewatching GoT, of course,  so I can scream at the TV for all the mistakes. And then arrange for a new TV after I throw a baseball through the TV because they killed Rhaegal. In a very unrealistic way, I might add. 

A shotgun wedding is when a woman hastily gets married after finding out that she’s pregnant, in order to avoid having a kid out of wedlock. I’m not sure how the name came about. 

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4 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

A shotgun wedding is when a woman hastily gets married after finding out that she’s pregnant, in order to avoid having a kid out of wedlock. I’m not sure how the name came about. 

Thanks. 

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