'House of the Dragon' - 'Game of Thrones' Prequel: Release Date, Trailer, Cast and More

Photo: Foxtel

Fire and blood are on their way in House of the Dragon, HBO's Game of Thrones prequel about the Targaryen dynasty. HBO is adding more cast members to join Paddy Considine as King Viserys — Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, and Matt Smith. HBO also recently unveiled a first look at the show's dragons via two concept art images.

Winter already came and went on Game of Thrones, which concluded its eight-season run in May 2019. HBO wanted to follow up on the biggest show in its history, so the network began developing five potential Game of Thrones spinoffs. They move forward with one: House of the Dragon.

House of the Dragon had a bit of a winding road to existence. HBO first selected an entirely different project for a spinoff, set during the time of the Age of Heroes. But after filming a pilot starring Naomi Watts, that project was scrapped.

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When is House of the Dragon release date?

No word yet from HBO, though production of the series is set to begin officially this spring. The first season of Game of Thrones premiered in April 2011. The filming for that season took place throughout the previous summer and fall, so it is possible HBO may release season one of House of Dragon in the spring of 2022.

"My guess is sometime in 2022," HBO President of Programming Casey Bloys told Deadline in January 2020. "Obviously it’s a big, complicated show."

Production is set to begin in April, according to Casey Bloys, a chief content officer at HBO and HBO Max.

If it's anywhere near as complicated as Game of Thrones, consider this: Season 8 required nine months of filming, then took nine months until its premiere. If House of the Dragon follows a similar timeline, then we're looking at a release date circa March or April 2022. That would actually make a lot of sense, since almost every season of GOT premiered in those months.

When is the House of the Dragon set?

The beginning of House of the Dragon will date back to roughly 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones. That might seem like a while back, but it's actually much more recent history than the canceled Naomi Watts prequel, which was set to take place "thousands of years" before Game of Thrones and explore the early history of ancient houses as well as the origin of the White Walkers, Games Radar cites.

Photo: Thrillist

Considering Westerosi societies were very much thriving, and turbulent as ever, during the timeline containing House of the Dragon, expect to see political interworkings akin to Game of Thrones explored in the prequel series. Whereas the canceled prequel would've more likely focused primarily on fantasy elements, House of the Dragon is based on a book very much centered around ancestral hierarchies, warring nations, and a massive civil war. That should equate to a prequel series more tonally similar to Game of Thrones, a show as much about dragons as the dark underbellies of society and the ruling class.

For the uninitiated, House Targaryen is very much affiliated with dragons, going all the way back to Aegon the Conqueror's fire-breathing conquest over the seven kingdoms where House of the Dragon picks up.

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Who's in the cast?

Earlier this month, HBO announced many of the names joining the Westeros fray, including Matt Smith (Doctor Who), Olivia Cooke (Ready Player One), and Paddy Considine (The Outsider). Considine will play King Viserys Targaryen. Smith will play Prince Daemon Targaryen, the heir to the throne, reported Men's Health.

Also announced in the cast is Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina, Devs) as Mysaria, a sort of ally to Prince Daemon. In terms of badass levels, we expect Mysaria to be the Arya Stark of House of Dragon.

House of the Dragon plot:

House of the Dragon is set several hundred years before the events of Game of Thrones. It's based on Martin's novel "Fire & Blood," which chronicles the rule of House Targaryen from the beginning. The story starts with Aegon I Targaryen's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

House of the Dragon will focus on a particular part of the Targaryen history: The Dance of Dragons. It was a bloody and brutal Targaryen civil war that takes place 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. (That's a little more than a century after Aegon I's conquest.)

Photo: TV Insider

Star Olivia Cooke has revealed that House of the Dragon won't have the gratuitous graphic violence against women that was commonplace on Thrones. She told The Telegraph that "I wouldn’t feel comfortable in being a part of anything that has just egregious graphic violence towards women for no reason whatsoever, just because they want it to be tantalizing in a way that gets viewers."

King Viserys I's death sets off a struggle for succession between his daughter from his first marriage, Princess Rhaenyra, and his son from his second marriage, Aegon II. Princess Shireen Baratheon recounted this story in a fifth-season episode of Game of Thrones, reported Tom's Guide.

"Brothers fought brothers, dragons fought dragons," she reminded her father, Stannis. "By the time it was over, thousands were dead."

As Shireen noted, the conflict took its toll on the Targaryens, as almost all of their dragons died in the war. The beasts remained extinct for a century and a half until Daenerys Targaryen hatched her three dragons in Game of Thrones.

House of the Dragon concept art

Photo: NME

Photo: EW

Here's some concept art HBO revealed for House of the Dragon. It isn't much, but it does give us our first look at what the dragons might look like. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they look pretty similar to the winged beasts we saw in Game of Thrones. The last one in particular looks a lot like Drogon with the redish hue to its scales. And we've seen it before, but that last shot is probably the official House of the Dragon title screen/logo.

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