Winter is coming and on Monday, July 17 at 11.00am AEST, Foxtel will broadcast the much-anticipated seventh season of worldwide TV phenomenon Game of Thrones at the same time as the US, in a global televison simulcast.
HBO’s smash-hit, Emmy Award-winning Best Drama Series will make its triumphant return on July 17 with an all-new season of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honour, conquest and triumph.
With seven new episodes premiering, Season 7 will focus on a convergence of armies and attitudes that the show’s legions of fans have been anticipating for years. As the season begins, Daenerys Targaryen, accompanied by her unsullied army and emboldened by Dothraki/Ironborn allies and her lethal trio of dragons, has finally set sail for Westeros with Tyrion Lannister, her newly appointed Hand.
Jon Snow, memorably reanimated in Season 6, has apparently consolidated power in the North after his spectacular conquest of Ramsay Bolton in the “Battle of the Bastards” and the return of Winterfell to Stark control. In King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister, bereft of any surviving heirs, has successfully seized the Iron Throne by using wildfire to incinerate the High Sparrow and other foes in the Sept of Baelor.
But as these and other factions drive inexorably towards new alliances or (more likely) violent conflicts, the cold spectre of another, apocalyptic threat – in the form of an army of undead White Walkers expected to breach The Wall and invade the South – threatens to undermine the status quo and obliterate the outcome of these smaller, all- too-human rivalries.
Based on the bestselling book series by George R.R. Martin (a co-EP) and fuelled by storylines that have gone beyond the narratives set forth in those novels, Game of Thrones is set in the fantasy continents of Westeros and Essos, where summer can last years and winter (which is finally arriving) can last even longer. With David Benioff and D.B. Weiss again serving as showrunners, Season 7 was shot in Northern Ireland, Spain and Iceland.
Game of Thrones’ returning cast is lead by Peter Dinklage (winner of two Emmys for his role and star of HBO Film’s upcoming My Dinner with Herve), Lena Headey (300), Emilia Clarke (Terminator Genisys), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Oblivion), Aidan Gillen (The Wire), Kit Harington (MI-5), Diana Rigg (The Avengers), Sophie Turner (X-Men: Apocalypse), Maisie Williams (The Falling), Alfie Allen (John Wick), John Bradley (Borgia), Gwendoline Christie (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Liam Cunningham (Safe House), Jerome Flynn (London’s Burning), Iain Glen (Resident Evil: Extinction), Conleth Hill (Two Down), Nathalie Emmanuel (Furious 7), Carice van Houten (Valkyrie), Indira Varma (Rome), Isaac Hempstead Wright (The Awakening), Kristofer Hivju (The Thing), Hannah Murray (Skins), Pilou Asbaek (Borgen), Rory McCann (Slow West), Richard Dormer (‘71).
Game of Thrones has received a mind-boggling 100 Emmy Award nominations since 2011, and has won a total of 38 Emmys – the most of any fictional series in history. After winning a record-shattering 12 Emmys in 2015, Game of Thrones matched that same total in 2016, repeating for Best Drama Series, Writing and Directing.
Game of Thrones Season 7 beigins Monday, July 17 at 11.00am and encore at 8.30pm on Showcase
