Westeros

Elden Ring, a game from Dark Souls-developer FromSoftware whose world and story was created in collaboration with George R. R. Martin, now has a release date: January 21st, 2022.  A trailer was also revealed showing some of the gameplay and the amazing environment and character design that FromSoftware is famous for:

The game was first announced this month two years ago, and Hidetaka Miyazaki sat for an interview that discussed just how and why GRRM got involved (TL;DR: he’s a fan of his work from well before A Song of Ice and Fire).

The second season of Ryan J. Condal’s and David H. Mandel’s podcast about movie props, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, has launched. This first episode is ostensibly about the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the bullwhip famously wielded by Indiana Jones, but in the course of it some hints about House of the Dragons were provided by Condal.

The first piece of information concerned plans for future episodes, with Condal stating that he’ll be getting one of the members of the HotD production to be a guest to discuss what he or she does. He did promise it would be spoiler-free, because otherwise he’d be fired, but we can expect some interesting discussion in the weeks to come.

The second piece of information was that Condal confirmed there would be “bespoke” swords for “heroes”—that is, custom-made swords for leads and significant characters—but that the armorer that has been hired for the show has a vast supply of swords from past productions he has worked on that will be among those used for background performers and the like. In fact, according to Condal, the supply of past weaponry or armor that an armorer or swordsmith can bring to a production is part of the calculation when deciding who to hire.

So, whoever is responsible for the swords on House of the Dragon is someone with a great deal of experience making swords for film and television productions. We would guess that they are also UK based, as it would just be very convenient. Interestingly, Condal mentioned Terry English (Excalibur, Aliens) several times in the course of the podcast, but a look at his credits suggest he may be retired from the gruelling production schedule.

Deadline Hollywood has the scoop: Amanda Segel (Person of Interest, Helstrom) is tackling 10,000 Ships, one of several Game of Thrones successor-shows that HBO has in the works according to reports from March. This project would feature Princess Nymeria, the legendary leader of the Rhoynar who led them from their flight from the conquering Valyrians and their dragons and ultimately established a new home when she wed Lord Mors Martell and unified Dorne. Notably, due to the death of many the men among the Rhoynar in Garin’s war, Nymeria’s fleet of ships was dominated by women, suggesting this show’s cast would be the most likely to be predominantly-female.

Most of what we know regarding Nymeria and the Rhoynar comes from our own The World of Ice and Fire (affiliate link).

For a long while now, we have occasionally shared tweets from the official Westeroscraft twitter account, sharing yet another screenshot of the work-in-progress Westeroscraft server.  There, Minecraft fans who love A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are recreating Westeros block by block, and the results are truly impressive as the images and videos linked at their official wiki show. We can’t imagine how many hours of work have gone into it!

Below you’ll find a selection of recent tweets from Westeroscraft, providing some great images and explanations of what is being shown:

After a deal of footage has made its way to the internet from photographers with long lenses, HBO has now released to media images of some of the costumed lead performers from House of the Dragon. These feature Emma D’Arcy and Matt Smith as Rhaenyra Targaryen and Daemon Targaryen, Steve Touissant as Corlys Velaryon, and Olivia Cooke and Rhys Ifans as Alicent Hightower and her father Otto Hightower. See the images below, with some comments.

Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen” and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen. Typical Targaryen looks, as expected. Rhaenyra’s costuming fits the description of her preferred colors and textiles such as maroon and velvets. Her long braid is also drawn from Martin’s description.

The Locus Awards finalists have been announced, and down in the Illustrated and Art Book category there was a pleasant surprise in the form of George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords: The Illustrated Edition, with illustrations by the award-winning Gary Gianni. Gianni has previously provided art for one of the A Song of Ice and Fire calendars, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and Subterranean Press’s limited edition of Fire and Blood.

The winners will be announced on June 26th, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend event.

After a number of flame emojis were tweeted by the official Game of Thrones Twitter account, with the number growing every 15 minutes, the burst of flames culminated in the exciting announcement that production of House of the Dragon has commenced in a tweet with an intriguing picture of a distanced production team (including, if I’m not mistaken, showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan J. Condal):

Although we’re not generally planning to track details of filming of HBO’s House of the Dragon, a recent report from Cornwall Live caught our attention for a couple of reasons. One, we did not know that the famous Mont-Saint-Michel has a Cornish cousin in St. Michael’s Mount (apparently in close vicinity to Penzance harbor, of The Pirates of Penzance fame!) Secondly, and more to the point, one of the photos revealed what appears to be the show’s version of the heraldic arms of House Velaryon… and they don’t fit what George R. R. Martin confirmed to us over 20 years ago.

This mail, from our first year of correspondence with GRRM, refers to the fact that he had been visiting Westeros.org to look at the heraldry we had been producing from the books and then from his own notes. Though my original mail to him is lost, from context I think I must have remarked that we took a guess that he meant an actual seahorse and not the mythical or sea-horse (confusingly, both are also known as hippocampus).

Released last year, Asmodee Digital‘s and Dire Wolf Digital‘s PC and Mac adaption of the popular A Game of Thrones: The Board Game from Fantasy Flight Games has done quite well in translating the board game to digital. They stated then that they had plans to add DLC based on the expansions of the board game, as well as bringing the game to mobile platforms… and earlier this month they succeeded at doing both, bringing the A Dance of Dragons expansion to the game while also porting it to iOS and Android.

Asmodee Digital has sent a press release with a lot more details, including pricing for the mobile editions and a sense of the chief features of the DLC. Read it below!

We’ve reported previously on the news that theater producers and a live event production company are now working on bringing the tourney at Harrenhal, and the dramatic events that unfolded there, to Broadway and other theatrical venues. We noted at the time that Startling Inc.—Vince Gerardis’s company—had removed the reference to “A Song of Ice and Fire with The Works”, the thing that clued us into the fact that something like this was happening. A sharp-eyed fan and member of our forum, zionius, checked it today and noticed that the project has reappeared with a new name that we assume is a working title:

HARRENHAL, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE STAGE PLAY

GRRM has finally gotten his wish to break some news regarding House of the Dragon, revealing that British actor Fabien Frankel has been cast in the role of Criston Cole, a knight who will remembered (and reviled) in later days as the Kingmaker. A classically-trained actor who attended RADA and LAMBDA, he is a relative newcomer with his first credits in 2019 (the Emilia Clarke romcom Last Christmas, no less!) Most recently he has appeared in The Serpent, a BBC-Netflix co-production.

Fabien Frankel in Gone Today. Here Tomorrow.

HBO has unleashed a wave of promotion for the “Iron Anniversary”, marking the 10th year since A Game of Thrones premiered. To mark the occasion, a teaser has been made… and many things have been planned during the month-long celebration, including some new and unique collaborations, curated viewing experiences, and a “MaraThrone” series binge which will bring actors from the show to rally fans towards giving to a number of charitable causes.

One of the most unique of the collaborations is with the world-famous jeweler firm Fabergé, who is producing a one-of-a-kind jewelled egg. More details below.

Well, more correctly, it sounds like something from A Song of Ice and Fire is coming to Broadway, as HBO is not formally involved in any way (but has the option to invest)...

You may remember this post from a month ago, where we stumbled across Vince Gerardis’s website for Startling Inc., which listed a project called “A Song of Ice and Fire with The Works” as being in development. Interestingly, we checked a couple of days ago, and that reference was gone. But the project was not, in fact, dead. It is, in fact, very much alive. Producers Simon Painter and Tim Lawson (of, ahem, The Works Entertainment; although, notably, The Works is not named in the piece, while Kilburn Live is… so perhaps this is a project they’re doing separately from their company?) are working from a story provided by George R.R. Martin to write a spectacular stage play—targetting, New York’s Broadway, London’s West End, and Australia—concerning the events at the Tourney at Harrenhal.

George R.R. Martin’s Stagecoach Foundation has teamed up with Legion M for a unique virtual event bringing together a number of Wild Cards authors (Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Carolne Spector, Carrie Vaughn, and Max Gladsone) to livestream a Wild Cards gaming session which aired last night. On top of that, tonight will see a live auction stream for a number of donated items covering Wild Cards, A Song of Ice and Fire, comics, a one hour chat with noted game designer Warren Spector (Deus Ex) and even a private tour of Meow Wolf’s forthcoming Denver experience.

The streaming schedule and more information can be found at Legion M’s event page, while the full list of items for auction can be found at Bidpal.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, George R.R. Martin has renewed his overall deal with HBO, this time for a reported “mid-eight figure” contract that spans five years. An overall deal is one in which any new ideas or pitches a creator generates will belong to the studio. George first signed an overall deal with HBO back in 2013, which was then renewed in 2016. The article proceeds to run through the five projects in various stages of development, as well as House of the Dragon which begins filming next month if all goes to plan. We did like the speculation on the animated project: