Kit Harington is best known for playing Jon Snow on Game of Thrones, and even six years after it ended, he gets asked about whether he might make a comeback. To be fair, he kind of tempted those questions when he came to HBO with an idea for a Jon Snow sequel show, a series that ended up being shelved. But to be even more fair, we were probably never supposed to know about that.
As of right now, Harington is out of the Jon Snow business. "No, there's no plan for any furtherance of the Game of Thrones story and there are currently no plans for any kind of furthering of Jon Snow," he told Mashable. "Who knows...maybe one day! I'm just pretty much taking everything I have at the moment. I'm being a dad."
Being a dad would keep just about anybody busy, but Harington is still working. He talked a bunch about his 2024 horror film The Beast Within, where he plays an abusive husband and father who also happens to be a werewolf. "I didn’t have to play the actual wolf, which was good!" he said. "I just had to play a guy who’s a violent alcoholic, and that wasn’t a comfortable place to be. He’s not a very comfortable character to get into. For me, I didn’t want to do anything like adopting a ‘wolfish’ persona. I thought there were moments when he does things the girl interprets as wolf-like in her imagination. The games he plays with her have this kind of chasing, menacing quality—like what we do when we play with kids. But I didn’t want to lean into any sort of animalistic performance. I think that would have been distracting."
Kit Harington is not impressed with AI
Mashable asked Harington his opinion on generative artificial intelligence, which has been talked about a huge amount in the past few years. People have used AI to create short videos, and although it hasn't happened yet, it feels like it's only a matter of time before it's implemented into movies and TV in a more substantial way.
For his part, Harington isn't enthused or impressed. "I just don't think anything artificial can ever replicate human creativity no matter how much it tries, so if we sit down and enjoy watching films because you want to see the human experience, why would we sit down and watch an AI written script and AI simulation? Why would we do that?" he said. "I think, you know, maybe they'll use it in the right way for the right tools, but no, I think for me I don't spend my time thinking about it because it's not there yet and I don’t think it is very good."
"I think it would be stupid of our industry to start relying on AI to do things that humans do and if that's the way our industry goes, I don't really want to be part of it."
I wonder if actors will have to start crossing these brides in the near future, but I don't think we're there yet. But you know someone's going to try and make an all-AI movie in the foreseeable future, and the discourse will get even more heated than it is now.
Back to Game of Thrones, there may not be a Jon Snow sequel series coming along anytime soon, but there's plenty happening in Westeros. HBO is filming the third season of the prequel show House of the Dragon as we speak. They're also working on a new prequel series called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas by George R.R. Martin. Expect to see both of these shows drop new episodes sometime next year. Jon Snow won't be in them, but the spirit of Game of Thrones will live on.
Harington is keeping at it too. He's reuniting with his Game of Thrones costar Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) in The Dreadful, another horror movie, but this one set in medieval times, so it's even closer to Game of Thrones territory. Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden will also star. There's no release date for that one set as of yet.
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