House of the Dragon: Air date of season two of Game of Thrones spin-off confirmed
House of the Dragon was one of the most expensive and popular shows in years – now an air date has been confirmed for its second season.
Game of Thrones fans rejoice: a second season of the spin off series House of the Dragon is set in stone and a date has been announced for its return.
The wonders and horrors of Westeros will once again grace the screens of BINGE and Foxtel in early winter of 2024, Australian time.
And if that’s not enough, a further GoT drama series is also set to start filming next year.
“The blacks and the greens are back at it again, circling each other in a time of war,” HBO chief executive Casey Bloys said in New York, referring to House of the Dragon’s two main factions of characters.
HBO, and sister streamer Max, produce House of the Dragon and a slew of other big name shows, which air in Australia on Foxtel’s platforms.
At an event to announce programs that will air in 2024, the Warner Brothers Discovery owned company highlighted a new series of crime drama True Detective to star Jodie Foster; a comedy headlined by Kate Winslet as an inept dictator, Australian actor Hoa Xuande playing a communist spy in 1970s LA and a Batman spin off with a heavily made up Colin Farrell called The Penguin.
But fans of The White Lotus will have to wait longer for its third instalment with the writers’ and then actors’ strikes delaying production meaning it could be 2025 before it airs. While smash hit computer game turned apocalyptic drama The Last of Us has also seen a delayand season three of Sex in the City spin off And Just Like That … has only just begun initial production so will be some time coming.
Australia ‘important’ to HBO
Talking to news.com.au in Manhattan, HBO’s Mr Bloys said global blockbuster shows The Last of Us and House of the Dragon were its big hitters in Australia.
A second season of House of the Dragon had already been confirmed but at the HBO presentation it was announced the new season would likely air early next winter.
Season one wasn’t cheap to make, with reports a cool $300 million was splashed on the epic. But with 30 million watching each episode in the US alone, it was a rolled gold hit. In Australia, 1.25 million people watched the first episode of House of Dragon within a week of it being aired. It became the biggest premiere of all time on Binge.
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Based on the novel Fire and Blood by George R R Martin and created with showrunner Ryan Condal, House of the Dragon 2 will see more gory violence, weird sex, massive battles, Machiavellian machinations and, naturally, fire breathing dragons.
The spin off focuses on House Targaryen at the apex of its power – and just as its rule over Westeros begins to wane. War beckoned at the end of season one.
Another GoT spin off planned
The program maker also said another GoT spin off was in the works.
Depending on the resolution of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which has delayed multiple TV projects, A King of the Seven Kingdoms will start production early in 2024.
Adapting Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas, it will be a prequel to GoT focusing on Sir Duncan the Tall and the future King Aegon V Targaryen.
“We always have Game of Thrones scripts, and ideas, in development,” said Mr Bloys.
True Detective returns after five year break
If wars in Westeros aren’t your thing, perhaps True Detective: Night Country will.
The fourth season of the crime anthology will air in January, five years after the third season.
Double Academy Award winner Jodie Foster stars as Detective Liz Danvers who investigates the disappearance of eight men from an Alaska research station.
Writer and producer Issa Lopez said Foster was “one of the best, if not the best actor right now”.
She added that True Detective: Night Country had shades of John Carpenter’s The Thing and The Shining, as well as the notorious Dyatlov Pass incident in Russia in 1959 where nine hikers were found dead in gruesome and bizarre circumstances.
Aussie actor’s huge new role
Robert Downy Jr, Sandra Oh and Australian actor Hoa Xuande – who has starred in Foxtel’s Top of the Lake: China Girl and SBS’ Hungry Ghost – will star in The Sympathiser.
The comedy drama is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name which takes place after the fall of Saigon when a communist North Vietnamese spy embeds himself with the South Vietnamese community in Los Angeles.
An unrecognisable Colin Farrell will take the lead in The Penguin, a Batman universe series.
The Irish actor was transformed under layers of prosthetics into DC Comic’s Gotham City mobster.
Kate Winslet takes a dark comedic turn in The Regime as a European dictator losing her grip on power.
Next year will also see a much anticipated follow up to 2015’s documentary The Jinx about New York real estate heir and convicted murder Robert Durst.
The original doco looked into the disappearance of Durst’s wife and several unsolved murders.
Over eight years, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki dug further into Durst’s past, including hidden material and interviews with people who had never come forward, to create The Jinx-Part Two.
Exact airing dates of the various shows in Australia have yet to be released.
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