Westeros

Last month, I had the opportunity to sit down with a number of the actors involved in Game of Thrones, to talk about the journey so far, and perhaps to draw out a few hints about what’s to come. First up in this interview series—leading up to and into the next season—I had the pleasure to talk with Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and Rory McCann (Sandor Clegane), the latter of whom I’ve never had the pleasure of interviewing before. We have a chance to talk the joys of Vine, the pleasures of Iceland, and how their characters get along as season 4 commences.

Interview

Maisie, many people have mentioned you as a very impressive actress. Do you have any method you use, or have you just picked things up since you started the show?

How does it feel not to get to act with Sophie?

To read the rest of the interview, visit our Features!

VerizonFIOS has a couple of exclusive videos up touting the upcoming season of Game of Thrones. The first is misnamed—it claims to be about the Red Wedding but is in fact about the wedding feast scene for the marriage of Joffrey and Margaery—while the second is a great look at the weapons and fight training. Note that the latter definitely is spoilerish in its way:

These are shorter promo pieces, half a minute long each, but they offer more tantalizing glimpses from the upcoming 4th season:

It’s been in the work for a few months, and at last, those of you with iOS or Android devices have a good chance (regional availability aside) to get a hold of the latest update to the World of Ice and Fire app (not the same thing as the forthcoming The World of Ice and Fire book), also known as the Game of Throens Guide for Android devices (Order: iTunes, Google Play). It’s a very substantial update, including dozens of new character entries, and scores of entries for many of the locations in the Lands of Ice and Fire maps. Especially all those new, never-before-mentioned locations found on the map of Essos, all taken straight from notes and details GRRM shared with us.

And for more casual fans who aren’t so interested in entries and the accompanying art? A Tyrion chapter from The Wind of Winter is included in the app, which is free to download (info packs—detailed entries that carry the app through the various books of the series—must be paid for as in-app purchases, but are unnecessary to get the excerpt).

Now, there’s lots of questions surrounding the app and its availability, so we’ll try and answer them below.

That Game of Thrones is a global phenomenon is without a doubt. It appears in scores of foreign markets, has events around the world where actors are eagerly sought after as guests, and the fan base reaches to some of the remotest places in the world. So it’s no surprise that the exhibitions of the show’s props and costumes have ranged widely, across both hemispheres. Usually, these have been specifically tied to promoting the TV show, but in at least one case they have been used for quite a different purpose: educational. At Stockholm’s Royal Armory, Sweden’s oldest museum and part of the royal palace complex (which happens to be one of the largest royal palaces still in use as a royal residence), a new exhibition titled Power Games (Maktspel) was launched last week exploring depictions of power in television and cinema. Set alongside costumes and artifacts from Sweden’s 16th century were costumes from the films Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age as well as Game of Thrones.

Linda and I were invited by the armory to take part, and so off to beautiful Stockholm we went! You can read more about what saw at the exhibit, and what’s in store for visitors, over at our Features page.

HBO has been on a tear with releasing content in the lead up to the April 6th premiere of Game of Thrones. After the NYC premeire, this new trailer was streamed—but now you can get it in all its 720p goodness via Youtube:

More to come, we’re pretty sure!

James Hibberd scores another exclusive, revealing that David Benioff and Dan Weiss have renewed their contracts with HBO, setting them on course to run the show through a prospective sixth season. As Hibberd puts it:

So, just to emphasize, a two year contract renewal is not a guarantee of a sixth season… but at this point it seems that, short of some catastrophe happening to HBO or the production, a sixth season is all but assured.

And then Weiss and Benioff will be up for contract renegotations again… and so, too, will a number of actors, we suspect, as six year option contracts are pretty normal in TV.

Week 3 challenge posted below!

Fans in the UK have a lot of reasons to be excited about Game of Thrones this season… not least that it’s now more accessible than ever thanks to NOW TV! The streaming service has all three past seasons available for streaming now, and will be airing season 4 within 24 hours of the US premiere date. Viewers can sign up on a month-to-month, no-contract basis, and besides Game of Thrones will have access to many other programs on demand and live showcasing a selection of Sky’s very best program offerings.

To help get the word out, NOW TV and Westeros.org are pleased to announce a contest series. The prize? An iron throne of your own, of sorts—one much more comfortable than the one Joffrey is sitting on. Approved by HBO, these numbered, limited edition Iron Throne seat backings will allow you to rule the Seven Kingdoms from the comfort of your own home.

Open to UK fans, the contest will run over three weeks, with one winner selected each week. See them below:

Week 1: DONE. Thanks for all the entries, and congratulations to the lucky winner!

Week 2: DONE. Thanks for all the entries, and congratulations to the lucky winner!

Week 3: Every ruler must have their words. Share with us your house motto , whether here in Comments (via Facebook) , on Twitter, or on Google Plus, and get a chance to win an Iron Throne!

We’ll have more on costuming soon, once we’re done with our report from Stockholm’s Royal Armory and its Power Games exhibition, but Time Warner Cable has a special feature on season 4’s costumes, courtesy of HBO. You can see it below. Among other things, I believe it gives us the first, absolutely official glimpse at Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Mace Tyrell:

A lot of new shots here, a few new bits of dialog, and at least one very, very interesting scene (see if you can guess which one we mean), can now be found over at the official Game of Thrones Facebook page.

Visually stunning work, as usual!

Thanks to Facebook Live, fans can now watch the red carpet as the premiere of season 4 takes place in New York City! Cast members are present in plenty, and have been answering questions put to them by fans. And most importantly of all, a brand new trailer will debut during the stream:

Although George announced his completion of work on The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK) in a post on Not a Blog last week, Linda and I have held off a similar post because our side of things wasn’t yet quite done: a sidebar we felt was important needed adding, an afterword needed tweaking, and GRRM’s Iron Islands material needed trimming…

But now all that is done, and outside of art approvals, final copy edits, and the like, Linda and I are essentially done as well. From 2004, when the subject of such a book was first broached while having dinner with George and Parris in Santa Fe, to 2006 when bidding among publishers finally led to our signing a contract with Bantam in 2006, it’s been a long effort—not a continuous one, mind, after the initial discussion, outlining, and the very first draft, as the bulk of the work waited until A Dance with Dragons was more or less done and George had more time to consult. Consult he did, and he made a number of contributions which, as Tolkien before him said, “grew in the telling”. Some of these narratives have since been published in partially abridged form—“The Princess and the Queen” in Dangerous Women (Order: Amazon UK), “The Rogue Prince” in the forthcoming Rogues (Pre-order: Amazon UK).

Following the big reveal of the April issue of Vanity Fair having an Annie Leibovitz-photographed feature on Game of Thrones, Vanity Fair has busily been releasing material from the shoots and interviews to whet the appetite. Most notably? This extended interview with George R.R. Martin. Lots of interesting tidbits therein, including his apparent hope that the production slow its tempo a bit by taking time off for a prequel series (as Spartacus did) or a split season (as many, many shows are currently doing these days). Executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss also get an extended interview piece, focused on the production side of things.

There have also been some excellent videos released with the cast members from the Leibovitz shoot, featuring everything from advice actors would give to their characters to what other characters they might want to play:

HBO has let us know of a wonderfully-amusing vignette, narrated by Charles Dance, recounting how David Benioff and Dan Weiss came to adapt George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series into Game of Thrones. It’s definitely just a bit on the comedic side:

Very charming! The list of just how many locations, cast members, costumes, and more go into a typical season is a particularly fun set of factoids

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin provides some news on the forthcoming cross-genre anthology he’s co-edited with Gardner Dozois, Rogues (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK)... and in the course reveals that he has decided to contribute a story himself, another piece of the “fake history” of House Targaryen. Here’s Martin in his own words:

Best of all, though originally slated for quite a late publication, it looks like all the stories are in and ready to go… so Rogues will hit shelves in the US on June 17th.

Fans of “The Princess and the Queen” will be in for a treat. As we’ve told fans on our forum in the past, Prince Daemon was one of the most remarkable men of his age, and what you saw of him in “The Princess and the Queen” is only a taste of the enormities and feats of which he was capable.

You can find the full table of contents for Rogues below: