Are these the direwolves?

Commenter Alexander has alerted us to a Norweigan news story on four wolves (starts at 15:30) that are being trained for an upcoming film/TV project . The news story does not mention exactly what project they are being trained for, only that they are being shipped to the UK upon completion of their training and they have the chance to become “big stars.” Which has led to the speculation that these may be the direwolves.

The video is in mostly Norweigan, but you can get an idea of the kind of look they might be going for. You may also notice that there are only 4 wolves and none of them are black or white. All of them are a greyish brown. This doesn’t necessarily rule them out as it would be easy to make the 4 wolves turn into 6 for the show. The only time we see all the direwolves together is when they are first found and obviously they will be using weeks old pups for that scene. As far as fixing the color issue, it is as simple as using dye to color the wolves’ fur. It is apparently quite common to dye animal’s fur in film and television production.

Even if these wolves aren’t being trained specifically for Game of Thrones, this video at least shows that using real wolves for the show is not out of the question. Earlier it was suspected that they would not use real wolves because they are harder to work with, but it seems more likely now that that might not be the case.

• Published on 09/22/2009 at 4:07 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/20/2016 at 4:55 PM CDT