HBO released two pieces of concept art to tease the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, confirming the series will live up to its name. The two pieces of art both give a detailed look at a dragon who will appear in the show. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar showed off the art at the end of a blog post, in which the company announced plans to release all 2021 Warner Bros. films on HBO Max the same day they hit theaters.
Kilar added the art as a post-script to the big news and included a look at the House of the Dragon‘s logo. “Principal photography starts on the next Game of Thrones series, House of the Dragon, in a few months. Look out for dragons overhead,” Kilar wrote. The series is being filmed at Leavesden Studios in Watford, England instead of Northern Ireland, where Game of Thrones was mostly filmed, HBO confirmed in October.
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House of the Dragon is a 10-episode series set hundreds of years before the fight for the Iron Throne seen in Game of Thrones. Paddy Considine (The Outsider, Peaky Blinders) was cast in the lead role, King Viserys Targaryen, the father of Rhaenyra and Aegon II. At the start of the series, he is picked to succeed the Old King, Jaehaerys Targaryen. He is described as a “warm, kind and decent man” who wants to keep his grandfather’s legacy. However, as Game of Thrones showed viewers, “good men do not necessarily make for great kings.”
The series is based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood book, which traced the Targaryens lineage. Martin co-created the show with Ryan Condal (Colony). Miguel Sapochnik, who helmed the acclaimed Game of Thrones episodes “The Long Night,” “The Battle of the Bastards” and “Hardhome,” will be the co-showrunner with Condal, reports The Wrap. Sapochnik will also direct the pilot.
House of the Dragon is expected to premiere in 2022. “They are in-room writing,” HBO programming chief Casey Bloys told The Wrap in January. “My suspicion is, this is looking a ways out, but my suspicion is it would be on air sometime in 2022. That’s with a big asterisk, but right now, that’s what I would say.”
House of the Dragon is not HBO’s first attempt at a Game of Thrones prequel. In 2018, HBO started developing Bloodmoon, a project Martin created with Jane Goldman. This was set 10,000 years before Game of Thrones, during the Age of Heroes. Although the project had Naomi Watts in the lead role, HBO chose against moving ahead with the project last year.
