The trailer for the first new Game of Thrones series in three years has finally arrived.
HBO revealed the debut trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms at New York Comic Con on Thursday (watch it, below). The company also announced a premiere date: Jan. 18.
The trailer showcases a project that brings a more Andor-like vibe to the franchise — more grounded and gritty than HBO’s other GoT prequel project, House of the Dragon.
The six-episode first season is an adaptation of Martin’s novella The Hedge Knight and stars Peter Claffey as a wandering “hedge knight” Dunk, and Dexter Sol Ansell as his ward, Egg. The show is co-created by author George R.R. Martin and showrunner Ira Parker, who were on the NYCC panel along with Claffey and Ansell. Together they discussed bringing a new tone of action, perspective and class experience to the world of Westeros for the series that was filmed in parts of Northern Ireland.
“I think the biggest thing about this show — finding its place sandwiched between these two [other shows] — was just tone, tone, tone, for us,” Parker said. “These novellas have so much hope, but they also have really brutal elements of this world that I think we’ve all come to love in Westeros, where anything can happen. There is a level of unpredictability that resonates with people because that’s just how your life is.”
Continued Parker: “Following Dunk on this journey — a very grounded, gritty, earthy, ground-up sort of feel, we’ve never had this perspective before of somebody who grew up in the slums of King’s Landing as an orphan who didn’t have a name, didn’t have an inheritance and didn’t have any money; doesn’t have the best training in the whole world. He’s just trying to make it. He’s trying to go out and do something hard that’s he’s never done before. He’s out of his comfort zone. And hopefully, a lot of that will resonate with our audience.”
In terms of perspective on the series, like the novellas — and unlike Game of Thrones — the panelists underscored that this story is led by Dunk in almost every way. “Everything is Dunk forward, and honestly, this affected everything from our music to the cameras and the lenses and shots to costumes,” Parker said. “I hope people forgive us for the level of unpolished that we exhibit in the show. It is intentional and is inherent. We think it gives a nice, cool new vibe to Westeros.”
In terms of how Parker and his team captured the anticipated and highly detailed action sequences of Martin’s novellas, Parker noted that they stuck to their rule of following Dunk, “and let this character [lead] in terms of tone and POV and the mud and the dirt. We want the audience to feel what he feels. We want to be with him as closely as possible,” he said. “This isn’t action scenes cut up very rapidly. It’s not the big, sprawling Game of Thrones that we’ve come to know and love. This is close and this is intimate, this is brutal and this is hard. This is what it would have been like.”
Claffey called the experience of Dunk and playing him a big, violent therapy session for someone just trying to survive. “[The character is] almost half human, half dog,” he said. “I’m an enormous Lord of the Rings fan, and I hope a lot of people are. But this world that George has created, there are a lot more sinister and adult themes that are presented, and a lot of treachery, backstabbing and it’s hard to find your way. And for a lot of people in this world, those things pay off. I think for somebody to have the valor in that world is something to really look up to.”
He added, “I really, really adore Dunk’s want and need to maintain the morals that knighthood has probably [been] forgotten in Westeros. I think it takes a lot more to be a knight in Westeros than it does in Middle-earth.”
In terms of the duo’s on- and offscreen relationship, Ansell noted that the meeting between Dunk and Egg was also the first scene they filmed. “Our bond was amazing,” Ansell said. “The whole way through, we had such a great relationship.” Claffey added that “Dexter mentioned he started filming at the age of 9, and he’s 11 now. … You realize you’re working with a 25-year-old in an 11-year-old’s body. He’s just incredibly mature, and I’m really in awe of [him].”
At other points in the panel, Martin spent several moments discussing the inspiration for the novellas, pointing to his love of jousting. “I’ve always loved Medieval tournaments in other [films] and of course we had several tournaments in Game of Thrones,” Martin explained. “But not at the center of it. [So] I said, ‘I want to do something that’s entirely set during a tournament,’ because I found tournaments were very exciting. I set them a challenge, which I think Ira has and his people have delivered. You won’t see it tonight, but you will later. I said, ‘Let’s do the best jousting put on film’ — a modest little challenge for Ira and his group.”
He also noted that a critic, back when Game of Thrones debuted, ultimately shaped his decision to do the novellas. “What one of the people said was, ‘Here it is, another fantasy, and we get to hear more about kings and lords and lords and kings and kings of lords. Nobody ever writes about the common people’ — the small folk, as I call them. And that resonated with me.
“I’ll never be a knight,” Martin continued. “But I am from Bayonne, New Jersey, which is right across the water. And my father was a longshoreman; he worked on the docks, and my mother worked for Maidenform. They had a factory there, and she was an inspector on the line. I lived in the projects, and I went to public school, so I’m the furthest thing from the lord.”
Martin also pointed to how his previous work in character perspective — multiple in the Game of Thrones books — also shaped the novellas. “We switched between the viewpoints [in GoT], but when I began this, I said, ‘No, I want to have a tight focus on a single point of view. Everything we see should be through the eyes of Dunk.’ That was something to discuss when we were developing it. I was strongly in favor of keeping it.”
Martin offered praise for episodes five and six, in particular. Speaking to episode five, Martin noted that, “I’m kind of prejudiced, but episode five is very potent because that’s the big action episode … Having a duel between the hero and a villain, or even showing a hero going into a battle against hundreds of people — a lot of people have done this before. But having seven people versus another seven people, all with their own distinct personalities and heraldry, and having all that going on at the same time is very challenging. And I think the way they settled to do it was superb. I wasn’t necessarily convinced when it started, but it worked very well.”
As for a potential second season, Martin added, “I hope you guys will love it, and that we will be able to do The Sworn Sword, which is the next one.”
The official description of the series: “A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros … a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.”
Other castmembers include Edward Ashley (Masters of the Air) as Ser Steffon Fossoway, Youssef Kerkour (House of Gucci) as Steely Pate, Daniel Monks (Kaos) as Ser Manfred Dondarrion, Shaun Thomas (How to Have Sex) as Raymun Fossoway, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Avengers: Infinity War) as Plummer, Danny Webb (The Regime) as Ser Arlan of Pennytree and Henry Ashton (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder) as Daeron Targaryen.
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