Quick Hits: A little bit of everything

A whole bunch of small news items from the past week:

• HBO reportedly aired a new trailer last night, the 9th one released for Game of Thrones so far. It has yet to be put online, but hopefully will soon. HBO also teased next week’s 15-minute preview with a short preview (a preview of a preview).
• Episode 4 has been titled: Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things (56 min).
• Some new photos have popped up, both on HBO.com and over at Canal+ Spain’s Juego de Tronos Facebook page. They include shots of Drogo and Dany, Arya, Drogo, Robert, and a direwolf banner. All can be viewed in the Publicity Photo section of our Image gallery.
• Some new videos have been added exclusively to Comcast On Demand. Including an extended costume feature (that gives us our first look at the face carved in the weirwood tree) and a full 3 minutes of the direwolf-finding scene. These videos will be added to HBO On Demand on April 4th. In addition, iTunes now has most of the videos released so far.
• A bunch of new items have been added to the HBO Shop, including beer steins and new t-shirts featuring art from the 5 alternate Thrones posters. Use code SHIP49AFF to get free shipping on orders $49 or more if you order before Sunday, April 3rd.
• Thrones was mentioned in the April issue of Maxim in a section entitled Get Medieval, alongside Camelot, The Borgias and Your Highness. In addition, Thrones was featured in recent issues of UK publications SciFiNow and Sky magazine (stay tuned for more details on those articles).
• Maxim isn’t the only publication comparing The Borgias and Camelot to Thrones, James Hibberd over at Entertainment Weekly has a post comparing the three series’ as well, complete with a handy reference guide.
• Westeros continues their series of cast interviews, this time with Kristian Nairn. Be sure to check it out to hear how Kristian ended up at his agent’s grandmother’s birthday part lifting mahogany tables over his head to win the part of Hodor. Also, look for some WiC exclusive interviews soon.
• Sky is giving fans the opportunity to win a trip to Northern Ireland to tour much of the locations used in filming Thrones. You can enter the drawing at the link, but you need a Sky ID, which means UK residents only.
• Israel premiere airdate on yes set for April 21st. Also, the American Forces Network will be airing Thrones starting April 23rd for our men and women in uniform. Check our International Airings page for more air dates from around the world.
• Aidan Gillen was interviewed by The Daily Record. Only a short mention of Thrones, but it comes with a great quote from Gillen on Littlefinger.
• This Variety article reveals the budget for the first season of Game of Thrones to be $60 million. Quite more than the previously reported $45 million. That puts Thrones pretty close to HBO’s most expensive show at the moment, Boardwalk Empire. 7Kingdoms.ru has a nice comparative graph of similar shows and their budgets.

• Published on 03/28/2011 at 8:20 AM CDT
• Last updated on 03/31/2011 at 8:23 AM CDT