HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, isn’t expected to premiere until 2022 but the cast and crew are already hard at work on the new show. Although the series is a prequel to HBO’s mega-popular show that ended in 2019, House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke is revealing how different the prequel is compared to its predecessor.
Olivia Cooke, who will play Alicent Hightower in House of the Dragon, spoke to The Telegraph about the new series. Cooke praises the fact that there have been a lot of changes from the first few seasons of Game of Thrones, noting that the writers won't include certain topics any more. Cooke explained:
I wouldn’t feel comfortable in being a part of anything that has just egregious graphic violence towards women for no reason whatsoever, just because they want it to be tantalising in a way that gets viewers. I was lucky enough to read the script before, and it has changed a lot from the first few seasons. I don’t think they’d be in their right minds to include any of that any more.
Game of Thrones has been criticized for its depiction of sexual violence against characters (most often women) and the series is also known to have a decent amount of nudity. However, it seems times have changed and the writers have taken note on how to better approach the scenario and to not make it all about degrading characters just to get viewers.
HBO first announced the Game of Thrones prequel series in 2019 and it will take place 300 years before the events of GOT and follow the events of George R.R. Martin’s Targaryen-centric book Fire & Blood. House of the Dragon has received a straight-to-series order for 10 episodes. The studio then confirmed the series will be debuting sometime in 2022 late last year after sharing the first teaser, with production starting this year.
HBO did have another Game of Thrones prequel in the works before House of the Dragon was announced that also would have served as a GOT prequel, but was ultimately scrapped due to a “troubling pilot.” It seems that House of the Dragon will stick around, as the studio has already been getting fans hyped up for the new series, showing new concept art and sharing when the series would finally go into production.
Plus, this is a way to stick to the Game of Thrones franchise for a while. 2022 may seem like a long ways away, but fans can always relive Game of Thrones either from George R.R. Martin’s books or by watching all eight seasons on HBO Max or on digital.
