Burning down the House: How Game of Thrones enters a new age with ‘House of the Dragon’
View(s):Before approaching the Iron Throne at King’s Landing, one must acknowledge the cautionary yellow hazard sign: “Warning: Risk of Impalement.” Like a bladed sun rising behind a menacing field of thorns, contorted melted swords cascade down the steps around the Westeros seat of power — but there’s little danger of bloodshed on this early December afternoon. Here on a new set constructed at London’s Leavesden Studios for Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, green tennis balls adorn the tips of the blades that line the walkway when not in use to prevent accidental injury.
“Literally we had to put [up] fences when we first built it,” co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik tells EW, taking a breather from rehearsing a climactic throne room scene. «Some of them are real swords. It is as dangerous as it is [described] in the books.
The redesigned throne feels a lot closer to what Game of Thrones creator and author George R.R. Martin envisioned in the pages of his A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which began with 1996›s A Game of Thrones. Martin notably had some fearless feedback for the version in the original show, but Sapochnik promises they got his blessing this time around. The co-showrunner, famous in the fandom for directing such Thrones episodes as «Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards,” estimates around 2,500 swords were used for the build, including prop blades borrowed from several major productions, such as the Warcraft movie and Netflix›s The Witcher series. There just weren›t enough swords to go around, but the ingenuity makes the royal seat an inadvertent mirror of the show’s mythology: Just as Aegon “The Conqueror” Targaryen first forged the Iron Throne from the weapons of his defeated foes, HBO built this new one for House of the Dragon from the remains of their opponents — other fantasy titles that tried to replicate the magic of Game of Thrones.
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