House of the Dragon crew wrapping on season 1—When will the show air?

Emma D’Arcy as "Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen" and Matt Smith as "Prince Daemon Targaryen" in House of the Dragon. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Emma D’Arcy as "Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen" and Matt Smith as "Prince Daemon Targaryen" in House of the Dragon. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO

House of the Dragon, HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones prequel series, is the most highly anticipated show of 2022. It tells the story of a brutal Targaryen civil war that tore Westeros apart around 200 years before the original series.

But when do we get to watch it? We still don’t have an exact date, but things are starting to come into focus. Filming on the series began way back in April of 2021, meaning the cast and crew have been going at it for nearly 10 months. That’s a long time, but the pressure is high on HBO to produce a worthy followup to Game of Thrones, so the network is taking the time to do it right.

We’ve seen various members of the vast cast announce that they were done filming in the past, but cast members are rarely on set for the whole shoot. The real sign that filming is wrapping up is when the crew starts to post their goodbye messages, and Twitter account @housethedragons has been recording some of them. “My last day on Game of Thrones today. (Will anyone ever call it by its new name?)” one posted recently. Another wrote, “That’s a wrap after 8 long but amazing months.”

When does House of the Dragon premiere?

So things are at least winding down on set. But when we will actually get to watch the finished show? Well, HBO has already released a teaser, but a series like this will require a good bit of time in post-production. The dragons on Game of Thrones famously took a long time to animate, and House of the Dragon has lot more dragons than the original show.

The show won’t be out next month, that’s for sure. According to a recent write-up in the German magazine TV MovieHouse of the Dragon will be out in in the fall or winter of 2022. There’s no guarantee that’s correct, but it makes sense.

That would mean that House of the Dragon could come out around the same time as Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, which premieres on September 2. We could be in for a battle of the fantasy titans!

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