5 surprising facts about Game of Thrones

In late January, variety.com reported that another “Game of Thrones” related series will come, with the name „Tales of Dunk and Egg” and process the events 90 years before HBO’s success series. Another series is set to take place even earlier, scheduled to be filmed this year.

“The House of Dragon” will give a glimpse into the history of the House of Targaryen. It is not yet known when we will return to Westeros, but until the moment comes, we have gathered some surprising, lesser-known facts about “Game of Thrones”. For those who are new to the series – there will be spoilers!

1. Tough Beginnings

Although there has been a lot of criticism from fans in connection with the ending of the series, it must be acknowledged that the work depicting the fate of the great houses of Westeros became one of the most successful and popular series of all time. Success, however, was not guaranteed at all. So much so that the first pilot episode had to be thrown out and film a new one instead. The casting did not go smoothly either, so for example, in the original pilot, the roles of Catelyn Stark and Daenerys Targaryen were played by Jennifer Ehle and Tamzin Merchant, but by the time the show aired, Michelle Fairley and Emilia Clarke had taken their place.
Another interesting fact about the original pilot is that it featured George R. R. Martin – author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the book that forms the plot of the series – who was a guest at Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s wedding.

2. Hard Tasks

Speaking of Emilia Clarke, filming was a challenge for one of the main characters in the series in several ways. Immediately on the first day of filming, she fell off a horse in front of the crew and burst out crying. In addition to the astonishing intrigues, spectacular and bloody battle scenes, “Game of Thrones” is also famous for its sex scenes, and the actress had her fair share of her own of those. Clarke spoke to Esquire and talked about the fact that one time a scene like this was filmed, she had to ask for a break, drank a cup of tea, cried a little, then went back to film the next scene.

3. Friendship beyond the movie

The Stark children get werewolf cubs right in the first episode of the series, though hardly a few of the special animals survive by the end. In the series, the werewolves were „shaped” by Northern Inuit dogs and the actress Sophie Turner, who played Sansa Stark, was so fond of her dog, that she adopted Zunnie. Unfortunately, the puppy died in 2017.

4. Exotic Languages

One of the main keys to the success of any big series is that the creators pay attention to every little detail, the scenery, the clothes, the objects, the characters’ behavior, and speech are also authentic. Although, English was the language mainly spoken in “Game of Thrones”, in many scenes the characters spoke in Dothraki and Upper Valyrian. HBO was assisted by linguist David J. Peterson in making the Dothraki and Valyr languages authentic and, in 2014, Living Language also advertised a course in which people could learn Dothraki. Another interesting fact is that the Duolingo language learning app made a valyr language lesson available in 2017.

5. Incredible costs

While it is not possible to know exactly how much it cost HBO to make the “Game of Thrones” series, hundreds of millions of dollars were certainly spent on the production. During the first 5 seasons, according to the news in the press, an episode came out costing $5-6 million, but there were also much more expensive parts. By the sixth season, they had a budget of $100 million, meaning one episode cost $10 million. The seventh season ran with a similar budget per episode, but for the final season they turned it up a notch. True, there were only 6 episodes in Season 8, but they are very long, with spectacular battle scenes, meaning that a whopping $15 million per-episode price is not far from reality.