With season 8, HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on George RR Martin’s bestselling books, finally comes to an end. Join The Verge as we navigate the character deaths, the battles for the throne of Westeros, the arcane politics, and the grotesquely complicated family dynamics of America’s favorite fantasy soap opera. From wild fan theories to books-vs.-show connections to creator conversations and controversies, we’re tracking the most compelling parts of this unprecedented cultural phenomenon.
House of the Dragon ended its second season with a reminder that this is all just one part of a much larger story.
The HBO fantasy series provided a boon in web traffic. But what happened when every publication started chasing the same thing?
The next Game of Thrones spinoff is now coming out in 2026 instead of 2025, Variety reports. HBO content chairman and CEO Casey Bloys apparently said at an event that it would come out in “winter,” though, so seems like it will be an early 2026 debut.
Warner Bros. is apparently in the early stages of developing a Game of Thrones movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I can’t say I’m surprised — add it to the list of other Game of Thrones spin-offs, which include House of the Dragon and the forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
It’ll be a while before before House of the Dragon is back for a third season, but HBO’s forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms spin-off series looks like it’ll keep Game of Thrones fans fed when it premieres next year.
Before 3 Body Problem premieres this spring on Netflix, WSJ Magazine dug into David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to discuss this new book-to-TV adaptation and, of course, their last one too.
They reveal AT&T execs asked if GoT could be shot vertically for phones and discussed making “snackable” mini-episodes (like, quick bites, you might say). They also said an idea to end Thrones with three movies instead of 13 episodes split across two seasons was rejected, apparently with a reminder that HBO doesn’t stand for “Away Box Office.”
Last week’s episode of House of the Dragon featured a scene that was shot in full daylight and darkened in post-production to make it look like a night scene. As a result, a full 17 minutes of the episode was virtually unviewable, regardless of how nice the TV you watched it on was.
Vincent Teoh from HDTVTest has done some measuring and comparing of the scene on various screens, including a $30,000 reference monitor, to see just how dark that scene got. The result? Most of it was well below a single nit of brightness, which is why it was so difficult to watch.
Teoh has some tips for those hoping to get a better experience, including turning off HDR entirely, but the only real fix would be for HBO’s directors to actually master the show for screens people watch it on, not just the reference monitors they are using while editing.
House of the Dragon’s no Game of Thrones
Promotions, demotions, a death, and the end of the journey
