MOVIE NEWS – HBO’s hit original series House of Dragons has officially received a Season 2 order. Meanwhile, co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik and the cast talked about the famous creatures of the House of Targaryen.

House of Dragons, the long-awaited prequel series to Game of Thrones, premiered last Sunday to record-breaking success. The series, based on George R.R. Martin’s novel Fire and Blood, is about the House of Targaryen at the height of its power.

According to an official statement from HBO Max, the prequel series of Game of Thrones “achieved its highest ratings ever in the history of HBO and HBO MAX”, with 10 million viewers in the United States and breaking local country records around the world. So it’s not surprising that HBO Max, which has been churning out back-to-back less successful series and films (including The Informer), has now ordered a second season of this hugely successful series.

Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, the cast and crew spoke about the thought and care that went into creating one of the essential elements of the series, Dragons.

The pilot features two Targaryen dragons. There’s Syrax, the golden dragon ridden by Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy, Milly Alcock), and Caraxes, the red dragon ridden by Daemon (Matt Smith). Another Targaryen with a dragon is Princess Rhaenys (Eve Best), the queen she never was, who rides on the back of Meleys, the Red Queen. According to co-series director Miguel Sapochnik, the series’ designers looked at 900, if not 1,000, concept sketches for dragons alone to create something similar, yet different, to Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys.

“I came up with the idea that there are three types of dragons. Some dragons are dinosaur-like; they have a big bridge on their nose. There are dog-like dragons, usually humpbacked; they look like wolves. And there are the horse-like dragons, which are somewhere in between. So I have a wolf skull, a horse skull and a T-Rex skull, and I designed the same dragon on top of them to see how the skull changes the dragon’s features,” Sapochnik said.

The largest dragon that viewers will be able to meet will be Vhagar, once owned by Visenya Targaryen, sister of Aegon Targaryen I. Laena Velaryon (Savannah Steyn), eldest daughter of Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) and Rhaenys, rides on Vhagar during the time period in which The House of the Dragon is set. She rode the she-dragon across from old Valyria during the conquest of Westeros.

“One of the most interesting things for me was figuring out the size of dragons and dragon anthropology. We found that dragons never stop growing. At a certain point in their prime, they are fully grown, incredible beasts, and then they start to creep up essentially. Their pieces break off, and they start to peel and grow so big that they break a leg when they land, killing them. What kills them is their weight.”

“I remember at rehearsal we sat down and talked about how you would interact with a dragon,” Carey tells EW. “There was this whole profound thing about living in a world with dragons… It’s something I never thought about even as an actor. But especially coming from the original series, you see these characters interacting with dragons differently. It was a very interesting topic of conversation. We really talked for at least an hour as a group,” said Emily Carey, the young Alicent Hightower actress.

How to train your dragon

Sapochnik said another thing they had to sit down and figure out was “how to train a dragon”. The film helped by being a benchmark, but training dragons became all sorts of things. In Westeros, for example, it is customary to place a dragon egg in the cradle of a newborn Targaryen so they can grow up together and bond.

“Like giving them implants when they’re little that later become hooks in the reins? Their riders are also children who don’t know how to handle the dragon. So they get little spikes to figure it out when they first give it to their rider. Then as they get older, they no longer need the reins, and the reins become redundant, etc. etc. etc. etc. It’s nerd town. I enjoyed it more,” said Sapochnik.

Some of the younger cast members, such as Alcock, who played the young Rhaenyra Targaryen, spent about five days on the set of Dragon Castle, filming with actors playing dragon handlers who taught the Targaryens how to bond with these creatures. They used a language called High Valyrian to communicate with the dragons.

“We’re in a big ditch, and there’s a scene where I’m petting my dragon, but it was just a big blue cutout with a big blue screen behind it. It looked like we were at a very s—-y music festival because there was a little raised area that I jumped off of. I had to pet [the kite]. Then Miguel said, “Can you smell it?”. I smelled this styrofoam smell, but I got a little stimulus, [like] you can smell your dog or cat. It’s a very human thing to make a connection,” Alcock said.

House of Dragons has been available on HBO Max since Monday; read our review here.

Source: HBO Max press release, MovieWeb