“Winter is coming,” warned Game of Thrones. They feared that when temperatures dropped, Westeros would find itself in an era of cold and darkness with no spring in sight. Now, however, it's time to say the opposite, "let summer come," because, according to Casey Bloys, CEO of HBO, The House of the Dragon will premiere its second season at the beginning of the hottest season.
It has been luckier than The White Lotus, Euphoria or The Last of Us which, although many expected them for 2024, will finally return in 2025 due to delays resulting from the writers' and actors' strike. How have you gotten rid of these same obstacles? Because the writing team led by Ryan Condal had already written the episodes before the strike began and, in the case of the actors, they were lucky enough to film in the United Kingdom.
The actors were not working under the agreement of SAG-AFTRA, the United States writers' union, but under the agreement of the actors of the United Kingdom. Thus, while all filming had to be stopped in the summer on July 14, when Fran Drescher, the president of the union, called for a strike, The House of the Dragon was able to continue forward with its plans.
Now that filming is complete, Condal has until June or July to finish the expensive and difficult visual effects of the production, which is set in the fantastic kingdom of the Seven Kingdoms and which features the appearance of dragons as one of its main features. attractive. The one who will not be linked to the production will be Miguel Sapochnik, the director who served as showrunner with Condal, who left the project for personal reasons, when HBO refused to hire his wife as a producer.
The House of the Dragon, which takes place almost two centuries before the events of Game of Thrones, narrates the dynastic battle in the Targaryen family when two opposing factions emerge to succeed King Viserys (Paddy Considine): the one headed by his eldest daughter Rhaenyra ( Emma D'Arcy) born from his first marriage and headed by his second wife, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), who defends the crown for her children.
Emma D'Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno and Rhys Ifans are expected to return.
In parallel, HBO is in the pre-production phase of The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, another prequel focused on Dunk, who ended up being the Lord Commander of the Royal Guard, and Egg, who occupied the Iron Throne as Aegon V. focuses on texts published by G.R.R. Martin and, chronologically, it is placed between The House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, approximately a century before Daenerys' coronation.
