Filming on the third season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon is imminent. The signs are everywhere: actors are looking at their scripts, the social media accounts are making interesting changes, and the sets are alive with activity at Leavesden Studios in England.
The sets are so active that the British government thought they might make a good opportunity for a photo op. The other day, Rachel Reeves, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (which is like the Secretary of the Treasury in the U.S.), visited the set to promote the Film Studio Business Rates Relief program, which grants tax breaks to film studios in the U.K. She toured the castle halls with executive producer Kevin de la Noy, talking about location shooting vs studio shooting and how new technology was being incorporated into the production process, per the Watford Observer.
“The creative industries in the UK employs 2.4m people, is part of our industrial strategy, and the creative industries is something that the UK is really good at,” Reeves said. “Being here today at the Warner Bros Studios Leavesden and seeing what that business rates relief has enabled them to do in increasing by 50 per cent the number of stages to produce films here in the UK, creating good jobs and paying decent wages, that’s something that this government wants to get behind to back growth and back British workers.”
Take a drone tour of the House of the Dragon season 3 set
Obviously, the photos taken of Reeves and de la Noy were cleared by the producers of the show. I doubt that happened with some of the drone footage that's been going around online, much of it courtesy of UnBoxPHD. In the video below, a drone glides over huge chunks of the set at Leavesden Studios, letting us know which locations we'll be returning to in House of the Dragon season 3:
By and large, there are no surprises. We get what looks like parts of King's Landing as well as the courtyard of the Red Keep. We see the castle of Harrenhal, where Daemon Targaryen spent a lot of time in season 2. There are a bunch of small boats in lines on one end of the set, which could be involved in the Battle of the Gullet, a big action sequence which is supposed to open season 3. Anything you notice in this video?
While filming on House of the Dragon season 3 will start soon, we have a while to wait before we actually see new episodes. Those will be out sometime in 2026.
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