Filming on Game of Thrones season 8 has begun, but that doesn’t mean that the cast and crew members, ever in demand these days, don’t have other irons in the fire. Let’s check in on a few of them.
Tywin Lannister is joining the Malick-verse. Kind of. Director Terrence Malick, known for sprawling, visually opulent movies like Days of Heaven and The Tree of Life, is executive producing a new film called The Book of Vision, about a young doctor (Lotte Verbeek) who comes across an 18th-century text about a Prussian doctor while studying the history of medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Then come the flashbacks, or something like them.
Dance will play both the Prussian doctor and the main character’s doctor in the present day. Although directing duties on The Book of Vision will be handled by Carlo Hintermann rather than Malick himself, it sounds like it has the same breadth of vision Malick’s films usually have. By the end, hopefully Charles Dance’s face will be a metaphor for all existence.
Indira Varma, lately seen doomed to watch her daughter die a slow death from poison as Ellaria Sand in Game of Thrones, also has a new project on the horizon: she’ll be playing another protective mother in Unspeakable, a story based on “dozens of real-life cases” that finds Varma’s character on edge after she receives an anonymous tip that her 11-year-old daughter may be in danger from her new boyfriend. “It is one little text message that explodes over 48 hours and that makes it so plausible,” Varma told The Guardian.
After starring in a lot of fantasy fiction, Varma was eager to take on a project set more firmly in the real world, although whether in Westeros or the planet Earth, she’s fierce about her children. Unspeakable will air on Channel 4 in the UK next month.
Speaking of British TV, Kit Harington’s new show, Gunpowder, is currently airing on the BBC. Harington, who’s executive producing the show, plays Robert Catesby, the leader of a failed plot to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords in 1605. The series kicked off this past Saturday, and it’s getting press for its extreme depiction violence: the first episode featured close-ups of a priest being hung, draw, and quartered while a woman was stripped naked and crushed to death by a stone slab.
Still recovering from the hung, drawn and quartered scene in last nights #gunpowder
— Charlotte Dubec (@CharlieDubec) October 22, 2017
I knew that people were hung, drawn and quartered...but yikes, when you see it, you realise how brutal our history was. #gunpowder
— Steph Parsons (@StephParsonsUK) October 22, 2017
Apparently working on Game of Thrones all these years has rubbed off on Harington?
The response was so strong that the BBC even made a statement, according to the Independent. “The scenes aired after 9.30pm with a clear warning given to viewers before the episode started,” a spokesman said. “The methods depicted are grounded in historical fact and reflect what took place during the time of the gunpowder plot.”
The next episode airs tomorrow. Let’s see if it tops itself.
In other news, Gemma Whelan (Yara Greyjoy) also has a new show on the air at the moment: The End of the F***ing World, a teen comedy about a psychopath. Watch the trailer below — Whelan only shows up for a second around 0:44.
This is also coming to Netflix, so folks should be able to watch it round the world.
On the crew side of things, Variety reports that “Battle of the Bastards” director Miguel Sapochnik will helm Bios, about a robot who lives on a post-apocalyptic Earth and is programmed to protect the dog of its dying creator (Tom Hanks). Along the way, it’ll learn about love and friendship and the meaning of life and all that good stuff.
It’s nice to see that the actors aren’t the only ones benefitting from the show’s success. But before Sapochnik can get on this, he still has multiple episodes of Game of Thrones season 8 to direct! We’re hoping they live up to the high standards of her previous episodes.
Finally, US Weekly reports that Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) and wife Erica Schmidt have welcomed their second child.
Congratulations!
Next: Season 8: Huge new castle set rises in the Titantic Quarter in Belfast (UPDATED)
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h/t Variety, Independent,