Game of Thrones likely to be renewed for a 7th AND 8th season

If you were worried about rumors of a two-part season seven, you can put those to rest, now. According to Entertainment Weekly, HBO is in talks to bring Game of Thrones back for a complete seventh and eighth season.

 HBO programming president, Michael Lombardo, announced these plans at a Television Critics’ Association press party on Thursday night.

The show had been speculated to conclude with a seventh season broken into two parts, an option pioneered by The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. Indeed, this development does appear to be a change of plans for the production.

David Benioff and D.B Weiss have referred in the past to a seven season run as their “goal.” Furthermore, the Game of Thrones cast are currently optioned for only seven seasons, so contract negotiations will likely be a part of the season eight renewal.

This announcement followed HBO’s confirmation that season 6 will premiere on April 24th.

What do you think of the plan for a seventh and eighth season? Tell us below.

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Game of Thrones Season 6 Premieres April 24th

For those who did the math, you were right. Game of Thrones Season 6 will begin rather later this year than usual. It will begin right after the premiere season of HBO’s newest show Vinyl ends. At the TCAs this evening, HBO confirmed that the Season 6 premiere date has just been announced as April 24th, which is a full two weeks later than the season has ever started before.

Did HBO do this in order to give Martin some breathing room if he had indeed made his deadline for a March 31st release date for The Winds of Winter? HBO isn’t about to answer that question, especially now that the deadline was blown and the book will not be released before the season starts. Whatever the reason–if it was to give the show more time for CGI work, for Martin to write or just because HBO wanted to start it later–the proof will probably be if they continue to push the premiere dates later in subsequent seasons.

Variety notes that actually the move might be a strategic one to get as many Emmy votes as possible. The finale will air just before the voting period for the 2016 Emmys begins on June 24th, and with whatever blow out of a finale the show has in mind fresh in voter’s minds, they are probably hoping to blow another round of Emmys out of the water and set all new benchmarks for future shows to try and reach.

Now….can we get a trailer? Please?

Next: Celeb roundup: Daario goes hog-wild,

 

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/01/07/game-of-thrones-season-6-premieres-april-24th/

HBO confirms April premiere date for Game of Thrones!

HBO has now officially confirmed the premiere date for season six of Game of Thrones. As expected, the new season will arrive on Sunday, April 24th, in its usual 9:00PM slot.

HBO also confirmed today that the new seasons of Silicon Valley and Veep will debut on April 24, airing after Game of Thrones.

This has been the predicted premiere date for season six for a few months now, since HBO confirmed that their new series Vinyl would run into mid-April. The Jon Snow teaser poster unveiled in November with the word “April” reinforced the predicted date.

Time to get the countdown clock up and running!

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Celeb roundup: Daario goes hog-wild, Clarke stands along Star Wars stars, and more

Michiel Huisman may not have been the first actor to play Daario Naharis, but at this point he’s the one fixed the mind of most fans. Huisman will trade on his bad boy image with a roll in an upcoming miniseries as Walter Davidson, one of two Davidson brothers who strapped an engine onto a bicycle and eventually founded Harley-Davidson, the iconic motorcycle manufacturer. Coincidentally, fellow Game of Thrones actor Robert Aramayo will play William Harley, the other half of Harley-Davidson.

According to the official press release, Harley and the Davidsons, for that is the series’ named, “will tell the story of how Milwaukee schoolyard pals built — and rode — the machines that rule the road. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, at the shores of Lake Michigan, the series charts the birth of Harley-Davidson during a time of great social and technological change and tells the epic story of how two 19-year-old kids from Milwaukee started a company in their backyard that would go on to become an American legend.”

Sounds fun. The six-hour series will premiere on Discovery Channel sometime this year.

Meanwhile, Huisman’s onscreen love interest Emilia Clarke showed up on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, in the Hollywood and Entertainment section.*

29 and loving it.

Forbes singled out Clarke for her role as Dany, but also mentioned her turns in Terminator: Genisys and Me Before You. Her list-mates included people like Star Wars: The Force Awakens stars John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson, and a lot of people I haven’t heard of.

Finally, while it no longer matters, we’re still bringing you Kit Harington sightings out of habit. He celebrated New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’m sure the instinct to report on this will go away eventually.

Kit Harington is in Rio (Brazil) to spend the New Year's Eve at the Copacabana beach. @WiCnet pic.twitter.com/XwfuK4xUlR

— Alderley Carvalho (@AlCarvalho_) December 29, 2015

*Really, because Forbes had 20 sections, this was more like 600 Under 30, but whatever.

h/t Entertainment Weekly

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/01/07/celeb-roundup-daario-goes-hog-wild-clarke-stands-along-star-wars-stars-and-more/

Benioff and Weiss up for a USC Scripter Awards for writing “Hardhome”

We’re barely into the second week of 2016, and Game of Thrones Season 5 continues to be nominated for more awards. Sadly, the show was shut out of the People’s Choice Awards, but no matter—Thrones remains undaunted. According to Deadline, it’s up for a USC Scripter Award, which honors the best in writing, for “Hardhome.”

The USC Libraries have expanded into TV for the 28th annual Scripter Awards honoring the authors of printed works alongside the screenwriters who adapt their stories.

“Hardhome,” the eighth episode of Game of Thrones Season 5, is up against some fairly tough competition:

• The Leftovers: Damon Lindelof and Jacqueline Hoyt for the episode “Axis Mundi”, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta. HBO and St. Martin’s Press.
• The Man In The High Castle: Frank Spotnitz for the episode “The New World,” based on the novel by Philip K. Dick. Amazon and Putnam.
• Masters Of Sex: Michelle Ashford, for the episode “Full Ten Count,” based on the biography by Thomas Maier, “Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love.” Showtime and Basic Books.
• Show Me A Hero: Screenwriters William F. Zorzi and David Simon, based on the nonfiction book by Lisa Belkin. HBO and Little, Brown and Company.
• Game Of Thrones: Screenwriters David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, for the episode “Hardhome,” adapted from the fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R. R. Martin. HBO and Bantam.

Naturally, HBO claims three of the five nominations, with Game of Thrones, The Leftovers, and Show Me a Hero.

“Hardhome” was easily the best episode of Season 5. With the massive ensemble, huge number of extras, Kit Harington’s acting and combat skills, and of course the threat of White Walkers and the Night’s King finally being made real, “Hardhome” had it all. And there were two new characters who basically stole the spotlight from Kit: Karsi (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) and Loboda (Zahary Baharov). They were introduced and killed in the span of thirty minutes, but still left a mark.

The Leftovers recently concluded an excellent second season, and Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron in Star Wars: The Force Awakens) was fantastic in Show Me a Hero. I believe Thrones has the advantage over Masters of Sex, as the show has steadily declined since Season 1, but The Man In The High Castle is excellent, and should give all three HBO shows a run for their money. Here’s hoping Game of Thrones has better luck here than at the People’s Choice Awards. The winners will be announced on February 20 at the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at USC.

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/01/07/benioff-and-weiss-up-for-a-usc-scripter-awards-for-writing-hardhome/

Joining Game of Thrones is a “dream come true” for Pilou Asbæk (Euron)

The closer we get to Game of Thrones Season 6, the more interviews from cast and crew members we’ll see. As Natalie Dormer says in a recent interview with E! News, “April, guys. Hold on, just hold on.”

Given that her horror movie The Forest opens this weekend, Dormer has been hitting the interview circuit extra hard lately, but let’s look at what Danish actor Pilot Asbæk had to say to Digital Spy first. In Season 6, Asbæk will play Euron Greyjoy, a vital character from A Feast for Crows, Theon’s uncle, and a first-rate nutjob. Euron is violent, megalomaniacal, and quite possibly insane, but Asbæk seems like a sweet guy.

“I must say, I’m a big fan of the work that Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] have created with Game of Thrones, and George [RR Martin] the writer, of course,” Asbæk​ said. “It was great fun being part of a TV series that I’d been a fan of for five years. I’ve been watching it every single Monday when with my wife. It was like a ritual – every Monday night on HBO Nordic, we would watch Game of Thrones together.​”

However, now that he’s actually on the show, he thinks he’ll stop watching it. “For me, it’s still magical, y’know? It becomes too real when you watch yourself on-screen.” I guess that’s kind of the acting equivalent of not wanting to hear yourself on your outgoing voice message.

On to Dormer: she stopped by The Nerdist to and dropped a few hints regarding what Margaery’ll be up to in Season 6. Dormer doesn’t show up until the end of the first video, but is the focus of the second. Be warned: SPOILERS ahead.

“She’s desperately trying to get out of that jail cell,” Dormer says of Margaery’s Season 6 experiences in the second video. “It’s interesting because you see this side of Margaery that you haven’t seen before…you see her a little bit broken. That’s probably verging on a bit of a spoiler alert. You do genuinely see her broken. We’ve been waiting many years to see the chinks in Margaery’s armor. You see them.”

Well, that’s ominous. We know that Margaery will get out of her jail cell somewhere in the middle of the season, and that she claims to have undergone a religious conversion. Based on comments from Dormer, we’ve assumed that the conversion was a put-on, but if the character has truly been “broken,” maybe there’s more to it than that.

Dormer continued blazing the interview trail when she sat down with E!

“I can tell you that Margaery’s problem is not Cersei anymore,” Dormer says. “That is kind of a spoiler. I don’t think I’ve said that yet.”

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/01/07/joining-game-of-thrones-is-a-dream-come-true-for-pilou-asbaek-euron/

To Old Friends and New Beginnings

Editor’s note: From time to time, we welcome new blood into the fold here. Our newest addition to the Watchers on the Wall staff is an old friend and familiar face in the Game of Thrones online community. Please give a warm Watchers welcome to WinterPhil!  -Sue the Fury

Well, this is different. The people all look familiar, but the surroundings have changed…

For those of you who may be a bit confused, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Phil Bicking aka Winter Is Coming aka Winter aka WinterPhil. I started the website WinterIsComing.net over seven years ago. I knew next to nothing about running a fan site or anything like that, but I was desperate for any news about the show (or pilot, in those days) and wanted to catalogue all of the developments somewhere. I figured there might be a few others out there like me. There wasn’t much news to report on then, so it was mostly just me speculating about everything from who would be cast as Tyrion to what the show would be titled.

The site quickly grew though and within a year I found myself going from random guy on the internet with a blog to a guy having breakfast with George R. R. Martin and meeting David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Peter Dinklage face-to-face. We were a legit news site after that, with casting scoops and exclusive interviews, the whole bit. It was amazing and fun and exciting. But it was also a lot of work. That is why, a little over two years ago I decided to step away from running the site, for some much needed R&R.

Not only was it nice to not have to run a website any more, it was nice to be a bit more removed from the fandom. I was able to go into season five with no preconceived notions. I had purposefully avoided any set reports or other leaked spoilers and watched only the first couple trailers; the first season I had ever been able to do that. It was quite exciting not knowing everything that was going to happen. I think I appreciated season 5 a lot more than many other fans and this may have partially been the reason for that. (The other reason, of course, is I’m not a hardcore book purist.)

While I was gone, things changed at WinterIsComing.net. I knew I was leaving the site in good hands with Zack and Sue and Marko and Axey and Oz. Unfortunately, the higher ups didn’t seem to agree with me. Despite giving me many assurances that they didn’t want to change WiC in any way and just wanted us to continue doing what we were doing, many changes did start to creep in. Eventually those changes were so much that something had to give. That is when the Fearless Foursome broke away and established this great website. They were soon followed by many loyal readers. The exodus was so complete, that I now consider this website the spiritual successor to what I started at Winter Is Coming.

That’s why, when Sue asked me if I’d like to come and write for Watchers on the Wall, I jumped at the chance. I’ve shared my thoughts on GoT on Twitter, but the character limit is restricting both in sharing my thoughts and in getting feedback from others. So I’m thrilled to be able to do some longer editorials here and to hopefully get into some great discussions in the comments. This probably won’t be a regular thing, and will likely just be me jumping on here when I have something really compelling to write about. Either way, I’m excited about being a part of this great fan community once again.

And this is the perfect time too. Just like when we had no idea what to expect from this show in those early days of the fandom, we are entering unchartered territory in season six. With no books to guide us, this season should be full of surprises. And I can’t wait to share the experience with everyone here!

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