House of the Dragon Wraps Filming, George R.R. Martin Loves What He’s Seen

Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin has seen House of the Dragon… And he loves it.

A new blog post from the Game of Thrones creator reveals not only his reactions to the what he’s seen, but also that filming has wrapped on the upcoming spin-off series.

“Exciting news out of London — I am informed that shooting has WRAPPED for the first season of House of the Dragon,” he revealed.

House of the Dragon is essentially a prequel to Game of Thrones set 200 years before the events of hit fantasy series.

Based on the book Fire & Blood, it tells the story of the end of House Targaryen, including the events leading up to the Targaryen civil war as well as the war itself.

Now, it looks as though filming is done… and it could head to screen later this year. And while Martin had previously seen the first episode, it now appears he’s binged the lot.

“Yes, all ten episodes,” added Martin. “I have seen rough cuts of a few of them, and I’m loving them. Of course, a lot more work needs to be done. 

“Special effects, color timing, score, all the post-production work. But the writing, the directing, the acting all look terrific. I hope you will like them as much as I do. My hat is off to Ryan and Miguel and their team, and to our amazing cast.”

But when will House of the Dragon be heading to our screens?

Thankfully, HBO has already discussed their plans with Deadline, confirming that the series will debut sometime this year, even if they haven’t revealed a date just yet.

“One of the reasons why we’re trying to be cautious about it is when you’re shooting a show that big during a pandemic, especially with the last round [with] a lot of crew and cast members… you didn’t know who was going to drop out or if we’re going to have to shut down so we just didn’t want to declare a date and then find ourselves shut down,” said HBO and HBO Max Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys.

“Now that we are out of production, I think that we will talk to their guys and figure out what we want to do in terms of announcing a date,” he added. “But I was just trying to make sure that we didn’t come out with a date that we couldn’t meet for something that was out of our control.”

House of the Dragon stars Paddy Considine as King Viserys I Targaryen and Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. They’re joined by Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Sonoyo Mizuno, Graham McTavish, Ryan Corr, and Jefferson Hall among others.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.