{"id":17360,"date":"2022-08-16T08:18:24","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T12:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-dragon\/"},"modified":"2022-08-17T15:48:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T19:48:02","slug":"inside-house-of-the-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside House of the Dragon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over eight seasons, Game of Thrones<\/em> delivered to HBO record viewership across the globe, much fodder for watercooler conversation, almost 60 Primetime Emmy Awards, including four for outstanding drama series, and a raft of other honors. The ending of the show\u2014based on George R. R. Martin\u2019s A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> series of fantasy novels\u2014back in 2019, and creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss\u2019 subsequent decampment to Netflix, left many wondering what a post-GoT<\/em> future would look like for the premium cabler. As it turns out, the home of Succession<\/em> and Insecure<\/em> and a raft of other critical darlings, under the leadership of Casey Bloys, has had no problem kindling new cultural juggernauts. But the brand is clearly important to HBO and its sister streaming platform, HBO Max, with a slew of prequels and sequels in development. This weekend, fans across the globe will be eagerly tuning into the first extension of the franchise, House of the Dragon<\/em>, with Warner Bros. Discovery putting the promotional might of its global footprint behind the launch.<\/p>\n

Debuting Sunday on HBO and HBO Max (the streamer will bring the show to 61 countries across the Americas and Europe), plus on partners such as Sky, House of the Dragon <\/em>is based on Martin\u2019s Fire & Blood<\/em>, chronicling the Targaryen family saga 200 years before the events that unfold in Game of Thrones<\/em>. Created by Martin with Ryan Condal, the ten-episode production features a cast that includes Matt Smith, Paddy Considine, Emma D\u2019Arcy and Rhys Ifans. Condal, executive producer and writer, is co-running the show with Miguel Sapochnik, executive producer and director who worked on several Game of Thrones<\/em> episodes, including the acclaimed \u201cBattle of the Bastards,\u201d for which he won an Emmy Award.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the original show ended, there were a number of different spin-offs that were being tossed around,\u201d Sapochnik tells TV Drama<\/em>. \u201cHBO kept asking me if I would meet the writers of the various spin-offs and loosely attach myself to a project. I had been working with Ryan on a different project. He got involved in one of the spin-offs and asked if I was interested. Ironically, it was probably not the one I was most interested in because it was most similar to what I had already done. But we had a good working relationship, and I wanted to be helpful. I said, I will help until I know what it is I want to do, but I\u2019m not going to commit to anything because I don\u2019t know whether I want to go back to that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The turning point, Sapochnik says, came following a suggestion from Alexis Raben, his wife and creative partner. \u201cShe has a line into current world affairs that is very different from mine. I was on the verge of saying, I don\u2019t think this is for me because I can\u2019t find the thing that makes it different. And she said, This would be much more interesting if it were told from the female characters\u2019 perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key to the sprawling story is the relationship between Princess Rhaenyra, eldest child of King Viserys I Targaryen, and Alicent Hightower, daughter of Ser Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King. \u201cOriginally, one was a woman; one was a girl. [We decided to] give them a shared childhood, so they grew up together. Suddenly you have an opportunity to talk about the patriarchy\u2014but through the eyes of these women. It was no longer going back and seeing more boys with toys. [Game of Thrones<\/em>] had great female characters, but it wasn\u2019t told from their point of view. Here was an opportunity to do that and be pointed about it. In retrospect, I can\u2019t imagine the show in any other way. Ironically, it\u2019s served the male characters as well. Both Paddy (Considine) and Matt (Smith) [who respectively play Viserys and his younger brother, Daemon] had to deal with a shift in emphasis. The show wasn\u2019t just about them. Consciously or unconsciously, it affected their performances and got them in touch with things they might not otherwise have been in touch with. It\u2019s benefited everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chronicling the conflicts within the dragon-wielding Targaryen clan as they exert their control over the Seven Kingdoms, the show jumps forward in time at several points within the first season, Sapochnik explains. \u201cEpisodes one and two are in one period; three, four and five are three or four years later; and then there\u2019s a ten-year time jump and a six-year time jump. That\u2019s been complicated and a challenge and something I originally felt quite resistant to because it was reestablishing characters when you\u2019re missing so much of their lives. The only way to approach this was to treat it like French movie-making\u2014they explain nothing! Catch up, pay attention. Once we approached it that way, it got a lot easier. You didn\u2019t have these long expository scenes\u2014here\u2019s what\u2019s been happening in the castle as of late. You\u2019re coming in on events that could not have happened without the passage of time. And then it was about figuring out the realities of what that means for set design, costume, etc., because everything evolves. And then the actors\u2014some change, some don\u2019t. How we divided that up was quite hard. In the end, we realized that the time jump of ten years\u2014when it happens and what happens to them in that interim period\u2014was such that they could play different characters, and that\u2019s OK. That was a relief. We had explored giving them physical tics and traits that carry over, but everything felt a little contrived. It\u2019s a good crutch, but in the end, you didn\u2019t need it. If someone is ten years older at 20, maybe there are some similarities, but you don\u2019t sit there and go, I remember when you used to pick your nose!\u201d<\/p>\n

Working on bringing the show to the screen for more than two years\u2014the initial location scout started just before the first Covid-19 lockdown\u2014Sapochnik and Condal have developed a system for best managing the sprawling enterprise. \u201cTime has not been on our side, and it has made everything more complicated. When we first started, we agreed not to do anything apart. For the first year, we would do every meeting, every phone call, every everything, together. Then you get to the reality of, if there are two of you, the natural expectation is you can do twice as much if you don\u2019t do it together. If you don\u2019t have any time, the first thing you do is bifurcate. We were being forced to be in different places. There have been challenges to do with what the role of a showrunner is when you\u2019re a director and what the role of a showrunner is when you\u2019re a writer. If I direct and he writes, we still need to be able to be in each other\u2019s stuff. I also write and am good at structure. Those things are important to me. Likewise, for him, seeing his idea through from its initiation, whatever theme may be in a script, to the final product and making sure I understand what he\u2019s going for. There\u2019s a negotiation between us that\u2019s constant. But also, at some point, you have to accept that I can\u2019t be there, so I have to trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sapochnik is aware of fan expectations about the new show\u2014and he\u2019s not letting any of that rattle him. \u201cMy responsibility is to the story. I think about it inasmuch as it\u2019s important to not think about it and to focus on the task ahead. This isn\u2019t Game of Thrones<\/em>; it\u2019s House of the Dragon<\/em>. So yes, there\u2019s a Red Keep, there are Targaryens, and there are dragons. But you know, Elizabeth<\/em> and The Last of the Mohicans<\/em>, I\u2019m sure, have some similarities; it\u2019s just that they\u2019re completely different! The responsibility I have to the fans is to make sure I do the best job I can of telling this story. And through it, if they find their way back to a relationship with the Game of Thrones<\/em> world, fantastic. If they don\u2019t, so be it. And if even better, it makes them go back and say, I\u2019m going to watch season eight; maybe it wasn\u2019t quite what I thought it was. I do want to do justice to this story. That\u2019s the only thing I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miguel Sapochnik, co-showrunner, executive producer and director of House of the Dragon, talks about the much-anticipated, big-budget prequel to HBO\u2019s megahit Game of Thrones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":17361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,70],"tags":[1132,431,5152,5153],"class_list":["post-17360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-hbo","tag-house-of-the-dragon","tag-miguel-sapochnik","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nInside House of the Dragon - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside House of the Dragon - TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Miguel Sapochnik, co-showrunner, executive producer and director of House of the Dragon, talks about the much-anticipated, big-budget prequel to HBO\u2019s megahit Game of Thrones.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-08-16T12:18:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-08-17T19:48:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2017\/07\/HouseoftheDragon-HBO-822.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"319\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/\",\"name\":\"Inside House of the Dragon - TVDRAMA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2022-08-16T12:18:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-08-17T19:48:02+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/inside-house-of-the-dragon\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Inside House of the Dragon\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\",\"name\":\"TVDRAMA\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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