First Look at Game of Thrones Spin-Off House of the Dragon

Words by
Lee Cassanell

8th April 2022

We’re heading back to Westeros with a whole new cast of characters. 

HBO have announced that Game of Thrones spim-off ‘ House of the Dragon’ with premiere on Sunday August 21st 2022. Set 200 years before the events of GoT, the show is based on George R. R. Martin's Fire & Blood, along with the novella The Princess and the Queen and the novelette The Rogue PrinceThe machinations of the House Targaryen will be the focus of the ten episode run with a lead cast featuring Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno and Rhys Ifans.

In a recent interiew with The Independant, Considine revealed the  inspiration behind his character, King Viserys: “The last thing you do when you play a king is go, ‘I’m the king.’ All you’ve got to do is be you, a human, and be compassionate. Lose the crown, lose the pomp, lose the bulls***, just play the person. And when I played Viserys Targaryen, I just played my mum, you know. That’s what I played – my mother.”

Another spin-off written by Jane Goldman and starring Naomi Watts was cancelled in 2019 after HBO had spent a rumoured $30 million on a pilot episode and there are others in the pipeline, including ‘The Sea Snake’, which charts the adventures of Corlys Velaryon,  the greatest seafarer in the history of Seven Kingdoms.

The House  of The Dragon will premiere on HBO Max on 21 August with UK release date to follow.