MOVIE NEWS – Showrunner Ira Parker says inflation is set to drive up the cost of producing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 2. HBO’s second Game of Thrones spin-off keeps following Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall and his squire, Aegon “Egg” Targaryen, but it’s doing so in a much more expensive reality. The episode count may stay the same, yet locations and conditions are making the next run costlier.

The production of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 2 is being directly squeezed by inflation, according to Ira Parker. Airing weekly on HBO, the network’s second Game of Thrones spin-off tracks hedge knight Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall and his squire Aegon “Egg” Targaryen as Dunk signs up for his very first jousting tournament. Along the way, he crosses paths with all kinds of men, including Ser Lyonel Baratheon (“The Laughing Storm”), Ser Steffon Fossoway, Ser Manfred Dondarrion, and Ser Humfrey Beesbury. Season 1 was filmed about 18 months ago in Belfast, Northern Ireland for roughly $60 million, but the cost of making TV has since surged.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Parker shared what he could about the next set of episodes. The upcoming batch adapts George R.R. Martin’s novella The Sworn Sword. The key point is that cameras could end up rolling in familiar Thrones-verse filming countries like Croatia, Malta, Morocco, or Spain to capture what the story demands.

“It’s still going to be six episodes. The scale will be about the same, and it might even be smaller. The budget is unchanged on paper, but inflation has made everything more expensive. On top of that, Book Two happens during a drought, so we can’t shoot exteriors in Belfast. We have to travel to a sunny place with no water, and that costs money – it’s a major expense we didn’t have in Season 1. I’m having a lot of fun making Season 2. It’s going to feel like a different season, and I hope it’s for the better.”

First published in 2003, The Sworn Sword places Dunk and Egg under the eye of Ser Eustace Osgrey of the Reach. The story unfolds during an especially parched summer after the Great Spring Sickness. Nearby, Lady Rohanne Webber (“The Red Widow of Coldmoat”) sparks a feud when she orders a dam built on a stream. Dunk is told to settle the dispute by fighting her champion, Ser Lucas Inchfield. Meanwhile, the cheeky push-and-pull between the two unlikely friends keeps the tone from getting too heavy.

AKOTSK Brings Back That Hound-and-Arya Road Energy

Game of Thrones fans will likely be happy to hear that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms plays like an extension of Arya Stark and Sandor “The Hound” Clegane on the road. Parker said as much during a recent roundtable, stressing that this trip to Westeros isn’t about dissecting the Seven Kingdoms’ political machinery, nor about looming demons beyond the Wall ready to wipe out humanity. Instead, it leans into “odd couple” beats, and Martin delivers even more of that in The Sworn Sword and in the follow-up novella The Mystery Knight, which Season 3 would most likely draw from. In other words, it’s a full series built around that kind of mismatched pairing, and that’s exactly the point.

“We’ve got Dunk, and we’ve got Egg, our little stable boy, and that relationship is probably closest to something like the Hound and Arya, or Pod and Brienne. George does odd-couple pairings better than anyone, and those were always my favorite moments from the original show. Now we get an entire series built on a small odd-couple pairing, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Source: MovieWeb