House of the Dragon season 2 wraps filming, targets summer 2024 release date

The second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon started filming pretty early this year. Then Hollywood writers went on strike in May. Since HBO already had all the scripts for the second season, House of the Dragon was able to keep filming. And then the actors went on strike in July. But because House of the Dragon was shooting in England, which has different rules regarding unions, the show was able to keep filming.

House of the Dragon filmed all the way through the writers strike, which ended earlier this week. Coincidentally, this was also the final week of filming for the show. Variety now reports that season 2 has “wrapped.” We’ve seen evidence of that as various minor players post on social media about their parts coming to an end.

Variety also says that HBO is still targeting a summer 2024 premiere date for the show. Normally, I’d say that seemed optimistic given how Hollywood has been shut down by the strikes, but again, House of the Dragon was in the unique position of being able to film through both of them, so it could pull that off. And the writers strike ended just in time for writers to pen new stuff if there’s any need for reshoots. Honestly, House of the Dragon made out like a bandit during these strikes, perhaps better than any other tentpole drama series.

HBO “looking ahead” to third season of House of the Dragon

Hollywood isn’t completely out of the woods with the strikes. Actors remain on the picket lines, although they’re set to meet with the studios for negotiations next week. Anything could happen, but there seems to be a sense that studio heads are ready to make deals, after which everyone will scramble to get things back on track.

For HBO’s immediate future, this means going hard on shows like House of the Dragon as well as The Last of Us, Euphoria and The White Lotus, rather than investing in much new programming. Everyone’s gonna have to play catch-up for a minute. In a perfect world, HBO would have already renewed House of the Dragon for a third season, but the strikes may have delayed it.  Production Weekly lists House of the Dragon season 3 as “pending renewal,”  but Variety says that the network is “looking ahead to a yet-to-be-ordered third season.”

Hopefully now that things are loosening up in Hollywood, we’ll hear more news soon. Before that, we’re hoping that the actors get as fair a deal as the writers did.

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