To say the excitement for the Season 5 trailer was building last week would be an understatement, as everyone, including us here at WiC, counted the days until the IMAX release of the Season 5 trailer.  (Face it, those Raven “sights” just weren’t cutting it either.)

But even with all the anticipation, these are impressive numbers. As you can see above, this screen shot (taken as of 12noon EST today), the trailer, which was released on Facebook at 5pm on Friday, has been viewed 17.8 million times in under 72 hours.

While you were out at an IMAX theater this weekend watching “The Watchers on the Wall” and “The Children,” Game of Thrones was out picking up yet another award for Season 4. The Art Director’s Guild Awards were held on Saturday, and the show took home the prize in “Category I: One Hour Period or Fantasy Single-Camera Television Series” for Season 4’s “The Laws of Gods and Men.” This marks the third year in which the show has won.

The final box office numbers are in, and according to BoxOffice Mojo, Game of Thrones scored an impressive $1.5 million opening weekend for it’s single week run. Opening in just 205 IMAX theaters, that’s an average haul of $7,322 per theater. That is the second best average per theater this weekend by miles. The only movie that beat Game of Thrones was American Sniper, which was number one overall with an $8,198 average and $31.8 million total.

But Sniper has been out since 2014, and in wide release for nearly a month, and is chugging towards the Oscars. In comparison to other movies that opened this weekend along side the show’s mini release, Game of Thrones blew away the competition. Project Almanac, Black or White and The Loft all opened much wider than Game of Thrones, and all came back with much lower returns of $1,500-$3,500 per theater.

Read more, after the jump….

January went out with a bang! Let’s take a look at our top stories.

WiC Weekly time! It’s our biggest week in month-thanks to the Season 5 trailer being released! http://t.co/X6Q2EeSq3L pic.twitter.com/y1Mheyfc4M

— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) February 1, 2015

  And that wasn’t all….

IMAX and HBO’s grand experiment in bringing television to the big screen looks to be tracking towards success with estimates ranging from between $1.5 to a $2million domestic haul this weekend.

Game of Thrones already created a record on Thursday night and Friday as the first television show to debut on the big (or the very big) screen. Numbers for opening day are confirmed at $686,000 from 205 screens, higher than IMAX originally thought. That number only gets more impressive when you consider that this is basically a rerun of two episodes fans had seen already, and was not modified or worked up in any way to make it accessible to the casual movie fans who might not be already familiar with the series.

More after the jump…

HBO finally released the official HD version of the Game of Thrones Season 5 trailer, on Friday. And many of the questions that arose from the plethora of leaked potato phone trailers coming out of the Game of Thrones IMAX Experience, late Thursday evening, were answered. That being said, I’ve broken down the entire Season 5 trailer, in GIFs, so that we can further expound on each scene.

Join me after the jump, for the GIF breakdown.

Along with the official trailer, HBO has released eighteen high-quality photos of characters in Season 5. These aren’t just scenes from the trailer–we’ve got several other moments that aren’t shown in the trailer. There are also characters, like Brienne and Pod, above, who weren’t seen in the trailer. But they’re certainly not forgotten.

More after the jump, starting with the other characters from The Vale and onto King’s Landing….

No more cameraphone uploads–HBO has officially released the Season 5 trailer for Game of Thrones via their Facebook page. Check it out after the jump…

Brandon Nowalk is a freelance television and film critic whose work has appeared at The A.V. Club, Indiewire, Salon, and more. He’s just begun two new series at the blog he never updates, But What She Said. He thinks it’s time to resurrect King Renly already. He’s also written for us before about Thrones and Outlander, and will be providing Unsullied analysis for us going forward. 

When Tyrion and Varys decided to take a trip across the pond in the Season 4 finale, I naturally hoped that might eventually lead them to a particular bed-and-breakfast in Slaver’s Bay, which I hear is lovely this time of year. But given the pace of things in Essos, I never expected they’d be considering the journey so soon. Then along comes the Season 5 trailer, priming us for just such an event. It’s a low-def bootleg cam on YouTube, so I’m not positive what I’m looking at part of the time, but it gets its point across: “Who said anything about ‘him’?”

Game of Thrones has been trending away from its macho patriarchs and toward its more cunning women since day one, and look how far it’s come….

Maisie Williams – Arya (Season 4 Game of Thrones)

Maisie Williams, who portrays Arys Stark on Game of Thrones, held court in her very first Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), this morning. As AMA’s go, Maisie’s was one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while. The actress answered all sorts of questions, from her Game of Thrones filming, to her upcoming role in The Last of Us, and for a first timer to the world of AMA’s, she did rather well.

See what she had to say about Game of Thrones, after the jump

The Winds of Winter book cover

UPDATE: The language  that Jane Johnson used is very careful and easily misinterpreted. All she’s said is that The Winds of Winter is not currently on the schedule, but since she stresses the importance of the novel, it’s fairly clear that it would be published as soon as possible. For comparison’s sake, A Dance with Dragons was announced in March of 2011, and published in July–that can still happen with Winds in 2015.

Original story below.

The release date for George R R Martin’s 6th book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series has been rumored, speculated and unconfirmed, but now it’s official. According to Time who scooped-up the story from The Guardian, Martin’s publisher finally has confirmed that The Winds of Winter will not be published in 2015.

See what will be published in 2015, after the jump

We’ve had our first good look at the Season 5 trailer of Game of Thrones, and we’re getting more and more hyped for the season. But this season is going to be much more of a loose adaptation, thanks to the size and difficulty of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.

So for readers, here are five of our biggest questions about the new season….