HBO's new Game of Thrones fantasy prequel drama series House of the Dragon will be an Express from the US series with DStv subscribers in South Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa who will be able to watch it on Monday mornings at 03:00 on M-Net at the same time as in America, with a primetime repeat later.
MultiChoice is following Sky which announced in March that it will be showing the 10-episode House of the Dragon in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland from 22 August directly after its debut on HBO in the United States. In New Zealand the show will also be on that Sky service from 22 August and on Foxtel in Australia.
HBO and M-Net did the same 03:00 "Express from the US" airings for seasons of Game of Thrones, with weekly episodes of House of the Dragon which will be on M-Net (DStv 101) on Monday mornings at 03:00, and with the same episode getting a late-primetime repeat on Monday nights at 21:30.
Based on George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood and set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series which will feature 17 dragons brought to life with special effects, tells the story of House Targaryen at the peak of its power and influence in the land of Westeros.
The show will chronicle the beginning of the end of House Targaryen and the events leading up to and covering the infamous Targaryen war of succession which became known as the "Dance of the Dragons".
The series stars Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D'Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Sonoya Mizuno, Fabien Frankel and Rhys Ifans.
The first season was filmed in the UK, Spain and California in the US.
M-Net (DStv 101) will also start showing the Game of Thrones prequel spinoff series House of the Dragon from HBO in August in South Africa, as an Express from the US title, but a specific date is still being iron throned out.
Meanwhile 9 new photos from House of the Dragon has been released by HBOthat is set 300 years before the events depicted in Game of Thrones, and that will tell the story of the ruling family Targaryen's descent into civil war, known as the "Dance of the Dragons", during a time when dragons were still in existence in Westeros.
America's HBO announced that House of the Dragon will debut on 21 August in the United States. It was followed immediately by another press release from the Sky pay-TV operator in the United Kingdom which announced that the series will debut there as an Express from the US title on 22 August.
MultiChoice and M-Net have not made any announcement yet but TVwithThinus understands that DStv subscribers will definitely also see House of the Dragon in sub-Saharan Africa in August, and as an Express from the US title as well, although M-Net can't yet say whether it will also be 22 August like Britain or days or a week later.
It's extremely likely that MultiChoice and M-Net will make episodes of House of the Dragon available online first as an Express from the US "Ealy Access" title on DStv streaming to try and curb pirate viewing, with episodes broadcast on linear a few days later on the M-Net channel on DStv.
The August debut of House of the Dragon means that two big fantasy series will duel like dragons for viewers' attention at the same time.
While DStv subscribers will watch House of the Dragon on M-Net, Amazon Prime Video, also available in South Africa, will debut its big-buzz The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series on 2 September on the video streaming service.
Similar to Sky in the United Kingdom M-Net (DStv 101) has now acquired from WarnerMedia's HBO Max both the Sex and the City sequel series, And Just Like That, that will start in December; as well as the Game of Thrones prequel spinoff series, House of the Dragon that will be broadcast in 2022.
There is no word yet on whether M-Net will be picking up the Harry Potter 20 year cast reunion special, Return to Hogwarts - also an HBO Max Original - similar to what Sky did, although it's extremely likely given that M-Net acquired the Friends reunion earlier this year from the same American studio.
The 10-episode And Just Like That will debut in America on HBO Max and on Sky on 9 December with M-Net (DStv 101) that will start showing it a few days later from 13 December at 20:30 with a double episode premiere.
And Just Like That episodes will be available on DStv Catch Up as an Express from the US title on Fridays from 10 December for DStv subscribers using the DStv app or a connected DStv Explora decoder.
And Just Like That will be placed on Showmax later once its run on M-Net is done.
And Just Like That is billed as the "next chapter" for Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her New York friends, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and some new friends as they find themselves facing love, life and friendship in their 50s.
The cast also includes Sara Ramírez, Sarita Choudhury,
Nicole Ari Parker, Karen Pittman, Chris Noth, Mario Cantone, David Eigenberg,
Willie Garson, and Evan Handler.
According to sources M-Net also acquired the Game of Thrones sequel spinoff series, House of the Dragon that has no broadcast date for 2022 yet.
Based on George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, the series - which is set 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones - tells the story of House Targaryen, with Emma D'Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen.
The M-Net rollout will very likely follow the same broadcast procedure as Sky with House of the Dragon that will be an Express from the US title for M-Net and be available on DStv Catch Up with the series that will move to MultiChoice's Showmax later as a second pay-window.
A magical return
Meanwhile, WarnerMedia is working on Return to Hogwarts that reunites the Harry Potter cast - Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint - 20 years after the first film was screened.
Sky has already picked up Return to Hogwarts that is set for a 1 January 2022 release date on HBO Max but with M-Net that hasn't yet made any announcement about having secured it. M-Net didn't respond with an answer to a media query made last week about it.
While author J.K. Rowling won't be joining the stars in the surprise-filled special, the American filmmaker Chris Columbus will be part of it as well to discuss the films and to explore their creation in depth.
"Fans will be invited on a magical first-person journey through one of the most beloved film franchises of all time", HBO Max says, with the cast returning "to where the magic started".
The Return to Hogwarts special will also include Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Isaacs, Gary Oldman, Imelda Staunton and Tom Felton.
Casey Patterson, executive producer, says "There's magic in the air with this incredible cast, as they all return home to the original sets of Hogwarts, where they began 20 years ago. The excitement is palpable as they prepare to take their fans on a very special and personal journey, through the making of these incredible films".
Production and principal photography has officially started on the first Game of Thronesprequel TV series, House of the Dragon, with HBO that revealed behind-the-scenes photos of the cast that gathered for the first, socially-distanced, table-read.
House of the Dragon is set 300 years before the events depicted in Game of Thrones and is based on George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood novel, chronicling the story of the rise and fall of the House of Targaryen in a time before dragons became "extinct" and passed into myth.
While House of the Dragon is the first Game of Thrones spinoff series out of the running blocks, HBO is planning several other spinoff series.
Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal are serving as the House of the Dragon showrunners with Ramin Djawadi who returns from Game of Thrones as the composer to score the series.
Paddy Considine has been cast as King Viserys Targaryen who is the successor to the Westeros throne, with Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, the daughter of Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) who is the Hand of the King.
Matt Smith will play Prince Daemon Targaryen (King Viserys' younger brother) who Otto believes is a threat to the new King Viserys' reign. Emma D'Arcy is Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, a dragonrider.
Also part of the characters and cast are Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), the lord of the House of Valaryon and a seafarer-adventurer; Princess Rhaenys Velaryon (Eve Best) who is also a dragonrider; Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno); and Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) who is the son of the steward to the Lord of Blackhaven.
House of the Dragon, primarily filmed in the United Kingdom, will start its broadcast in 2022 and the first season will have 10 episodes. House of the Dragon will very likely be on M-Net (DStv 101).
The Witcher prequel series on Netflix is casting, Game of Thrones will chronicle a new Westeros war, there will be familiar and new characters like Sauron in Amazon Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings series, and the sorting hat might be dusted off to sort a new class in a Harry Potter TV series on HBO Max.
In an announcement, Netflix said that Jodie Turner-Smith has been cast in the role of Éile in the upcoming series The
Witcher: Blood Originspin-off.
This limited, 6-episode, live-action series is set "in an elven world" 1 200 years before the events depicted in The Witcher, which is busy filming its second season in the United Kingdom with Henry Cavill in the lead role as Geralt of Rivia.
According to Netflix, The Witcher: Blood Originwill "tell a story lost to time – the creation of the first prototype Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal 'conjunction of the spheres', when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one".
Netflix's character description states that Jodie Turner-Smith will "play Éile, an elite warrior blessed with the voice of a goddess, who has left her clan and position as Queen’s guardian to follow her heart as a nomadic musician. A grand reckoning on the continent forces her to return to the way of the blade in her quest for vengeance and redemption".
Declan de Barra serves as executive producer and showrunner ofThe Witcher: Blood Origin with Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, creator of The Witcher series, as executive producer, together with Tomek Baginski and Jarek Sawko from Platige Films.
Besides this limited spin-off, Netflix is also working on an animated film titled The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf, that will tell the origin story of Geralt’s Witcher mentor Vesemir.
More Hogwarts and Westeros
As the video streaming wars continue to ramp up and studios are scouring their intellectual property catalogues that they could potentially build out into new content to set them apart and lure viewers, the Hollywood trades are reporting that WarnerMedia executives, in early discussions, are thinking about developing a live-action Harry Potter TV series for its HBO Max video streaming service.
In an official statement, Warner Bros. and HBO Max say that "there is no Harry Potter series in development at the studio or on the streaming platform".
Obviously, this statement is technically true - a series isn't in actual "development" - but it is only true insofar as everything that Professor Albus Dumbledore ever said to Harry Potter was technically true, although it wasn't at times all of the truth that was available.
According to the Hollywood reports, HBO Max and WarnerMedia execs have been and are talking about the possibility of developing a Harry Potter TV series and they see "expanding the world of Harry Potter as a top priority", similar to the way in which HBO's Game of Thrones fantasy series is being expanded with several prequel spin-off series.
Besides the already-announced House of the Dragon series that will debut in 2022 and that will chronicle the start of Westeros' Targaryen civil war, HBO is now also developing a George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones spinoff book series as a new Tales of Dunk and Egg TV series.
This spinoff drama series, with hour-long episodes and set 90 years before the existing TV series, will revolve around the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall (known as Dunk) and a very young Aegon V Targaryen (known as Egg).
HBO Max is not available in South Africa or sub-Saharan Africa and WarnerMedia doesn't want to talk about a possible launch date for the country or the continent.
However, last week Christina Sulebakk, the boss of WarnerMedia's HBO Max for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, announced her senior executive team specifically for this region - a strong indication that HBO Max will eventually make its way to South Africa similar to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.
A Sauron origin story
Amazon Prime Video has released an official description for the New Zealand-filmed Lord of the Rings prequel TV series, confirming that it will be set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, will include the island of Númenor and the elf-capital Lindon as locations, and that viewers will see "characters, both familiar and new" which means a young Sauron.
The as-yet-untitled Lord of the Rings series, the world's new most expensive TV series ever, is only expected to be released on Amazon Prime Video in late-2021, or during 2022 with Amazon that hasn't given a definite release date yet.
While the prequel series takes place thousands of years before the events depicted in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films and books, several of the inhabitants of this world have long lifespans like the dwarfs who live for several centuries and elves who are immortal.
According to Amazon Prime Video's new official synopsis for the series, "Amazon Studios' forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history".
"This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness."
"Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth."
"From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone."
The Second Age is of course when Sauron rose to power and corrupted the human leaders living on Númenor, leading to the fall of the Nine Kings.
The series cast includes Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Nazanin Boniadi, Tom Budge and Morfydd Clark as a young Galadriel.
It is the show you've been looking for: The show most-watched TV show through illegal means in 2020 is a show and a service that isn't available through any pay-TV option in South Africa with Star Wars: The Mandalorian series on Disney+ that has dethroned Game of Thrones.
According to TorrentFreak that researches and compiles an annual list, The Mandalorian on Disney+ is now the most sought-after TV series to watch globally - whether through legitimate channels or pirate viewing.
That is followed by the subversive superhero series The Boys on Amazon Prime Video, and with HBO's Westworld, seen on M-Net (DSv 101) and Showmax, in third place.
Noteworthy is that no show from Netflix appears on 2020's Top 10 list.
The force powers of Baby Yoda (real name: Grogu) has overpowered HBO's fantasy series Game of Thrones that for years dominated the annual post-pirated TV show list. The Mandalorian has jumped from third most-downloaded series in 2019 and is now in first place.
Disney+ that has rolled out in several comparable TV markets to South Africa, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South America, several countries in Europe and Australia and New Zealand remains unavailable in the country or anywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa.
While Disney isn't making it possible for South African to watch The Mandalorian and forcing them to pirate-view the show, The Walt Disney Company is oddly licensing, distributing and selling The Mandalorian merchandise like clothes in South African retail stores.
Disney has not announced any possible Disney+ roll-out date for South Africa, fuelling in the lexicon of The Mandalorian "the way": growing consumer interest in illegal downloads and sharing of its content across Africa.
As Disney+ remains unavailable although consumers would pay for legal access, more people over time will use torrents and other illegal download methods to watch The Mandalorian as well as other Disney+ content, which means that Disney will lose more money and revenue from content monetisation from consumers who would have paid to watch it.
New shows on the Top 10 most-downloaded list for 2020 include Star Trek: Picard available on Amazon Prime Video that is available as a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in South Africa, and the HBO Stephen King-based mini-series Outsider that was on M-Net and Showmax.
"The top three nicely shows how fragmented the online entertainment industry has become. In order to watch all three series, one needs three separate subscriptions. That's a cost not everyone may be able to afford, which can explain part of the piracy problem," TorrentFreak says.
Other shows on 2020's Top 10 most-watched list are traditional pay-TV series, including Vikings on M-Net City (DStv 115) and Showmax, Rick and Morty on TNT Africa (DStv 137) and Showmax, The Walking Dead on FOX (DStv 125 / StarSat 131) and Arrow on M-Net and Flash on M-Net City.
HBO's final Game of Thrones Comic-Con panel over the past weekend at the San Diego International Comic-Con 2019 devolved into a highly embarrassing mess.
It put a final trash-filled full stop behind the hugely disappointing series, as the scared showrunners bailed and ran, the cast that struggles to cope with criticism blamed the media for the worldwide revulsion over the badly-done final season and ending, while attendees boo-ed the actors over their passive-aggressive and ridiculous answers.
While the final Game of Thrones panel session at San Diego International Comic-Con 2019 over this weekend was initially one of the highlights to look forward to, the final appearance of the HBO show at Comic-Con degenerated into a bizarre trash-spectacle and a PR failure, causing Game of Thrones to become the biggest Comic-Con loser.
The final season of the once-loved show - now despised by millions of viewers worldwide who feel cheated after having invested their time, attention, money and effort over several years into what turned into a horrific and wholly-unsatisfying conclusion - was seen on both M-Net on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV service, as well as on MultiChoice's subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service Showmax from its Connected Video division.
The cowardly creators and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, too scared to face former fans, awkwardly bailed and ran from their scheduled and confirmed Game of Thrones San Diego International Comic-Con 2019 appearance.
It which would have been the first place where they would have had to face the public and would have had to answer questions about the show's rushed, trashed-up, underwhelming and destroyed final season that was filled with numerous mistakes, takeaway coffee cups in scenes and underlit episodes viewers couldn't see.
David Benioff and Dan Weiss were not the only ones who duck and ran - the scheduled and confirmed director Miguel Sapochnik, as well as actors Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont) and Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei) suddenly became no-shows at the Game of Thrones Comic-Con panel, without any apology.
In an utterly weird and out-of-place start, HBO's Game of Thrones panel kicked off with a bizarre public service announcement from the director of Comic-Con, Eddie Ibrahim, who was clearly told to do so after what must have been concerned discussions with HBO.
Eddie told the public "to accept each other" - as if HBO and Game of Thrones beforehand wanted to try and tell the public and Comic-Con visitors who paid to attend, to not criticise the disastrous show and fearing what people might say or ask due to the ongoing backlash against the show.
"I want to mention what we all love about Comic-Con so much is that we all accept each other. Think about it. We accept each other’s fandoms. Even if we disagree sometimes, we all do love the content that is brought to us. We want that to continue. Keep that in mind. This is a place where everybody is accepted and is at home," said Eddie Ibrahim.
The entire Hall H audibly groaned about his weird "announcement".
When Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) was asked what he thought about his dying-under-rubble final scene, he said "I thought it was perfect, that end, in the arms of Cersei. It made sense to me."
Once again audible groans and boo's were heard through Hall H.
Then Game of Thrones star Conleth Hill (Varys) decided to turn on the press, blaming a "media-led hate campaign" for the backlash against the final season, making as if the public are morons who slavishly do what the media tells them and couldn't see for themselves how bad and disappointing the final season of the pay-TV drama became.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau then decided to talk about "The absurdity of the online petition. Like HBO was going to change the whole thing. That’s the power of HBO!"
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau apparently missed Eddie Ibrahim public service announcement at the beginning of the panel discussion asking that "we all accept each other".
Sorry there isn't time for fan questions said the moderator at the end, closing off the HBO panel session without allowing any questions from any of the people who paid to attend Comic-Con.
Game of Thrones: The Last Watch is a behind-the-scenes documentary giving viewers a glimpse behind the making of HBO's fantasy drama series that M-Net (DStv 101) will broadcast this coming Monday morning at 03:00 at the same time as in the United States, and again on Monday during prime time at 21:00. The Game of Thrones: The Last Watch caps the 8th and final season that was met with widespread criticism from viewers and the media about the story and its conclusion, as well as production mistakes and in some instances being "too dark to see".
Yet the documentary is a "must-watch" for viewers who have been fans of the series for close to a decade, and will explore the creation of the final season, revealing the tears and triumphs behind-the-scenes in Northern Ireland and the studios, fields and car parks where the last 6 episodes were filmed.
Game of Thrones: The Last Watch is a personal report, done by Jeanie Finlay, from the trenches of
production, following the crew and the cast as they contend with extreme
weather, punishing deadlines and an ever-excited fandom hungry for spoilers.
The documentary is a Glimmer Films production for HBO, directed and produced by
Jeanie Finlay. It will also be available on Showmax from 21:00 on Monday 27 May.
Most big stars eventually burn out and collapse under their own
sheer weight. That’s also been the case with the final episode – and in fact
the whole 8th and last season – of HBO's Game of Thrones that ended in an
unfortunate meltdown and became a victim of both its own success and viewer
expectation that it simply couldn't sustain for a fitting finale.
Like Seinfeld,
Lost and Little House on the Prairie (that literally in the end blew everything
up), David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decided to burn everything down – with the
help of a dragon – in a disappointing viewer expectation scorched earth
approach; leaving viewers who had invested their time, money and effort for
close to a decade in a story, with few satisfying answers.
Even worse, the
final season and final episode of Game of Thrones provided few answers that
"made sense" given earlier character motivations and plot
development. It even failed to make good on the original, central premise: Who
will get to sit on the Iron Throne? (Spoiler alert: No-one, but in another
unearned twist not because there were not any Westeros candidates left.)
Game of Thrones
is a great TV show marred by a bad final 6-episode season and an unsatisfying
conclusion – like going to a restaurant, ordering chocolate cake because it's
on the menu and the waiter returning to tell you it's not available. The ending
damages the build-up and viewing journey that came before it.
The slow
derailment of George R.R. Martin's TV adaptation that became evident around the
6th and 7th seasons and became very clear during the 8th season where almost
every episode was worse than the one before it, will impact the show's standing
and legacy as a truly great TV show.
Knowing that
Game of Thrones ends in a way in which it kept moving further and further away
from what it once did best, will have a very negative impact its rewatch value
under fans and consumers of the story, its binge-watching potential and the
sale of solid-media like DVDs and BluRay discs. Less people will want to
collect and keep it.
The final
episode and the final season of Game of Thrones will definitely rank among the
least satisfying series conclusion and endings of all time. Viewers are left
wanting "better" for the characters – not better circumstances for
them but a better motivation, setup and plot, and explanations for why and how
they all ended up where and how they did.
If there isn't
logic and sticking to the in-universe rules for characters, coupled with a
roll-back of character development and a sudden lack of agency for several main
characters as what Game of Thrones did in its final season and episode, there
can't be an acceptable and logical conclusion in the end.
Watch Game of
Thrones if you've never had before or the final season and ending, but be
warned and know that it doesn't just run out creatively but that it eventually
collapse in on itself entirely – creatively and production-wise.
Mistakes like a
modern-day coffee cup and a plastic water bottle in episodes' scenes and the
too dark battle of Winterfell that neither the producers and directors during
filming noticed, not the editing booth or anyone else in post-production, the
abrupt and unmotivated character changes, and multiple unexplained things like
The Wall suddenly being whole again, are all symbolic of how almost everyone
involved with Game of Thrones' final season just checked out from caring to
make the show make sense.
Probably more
concerned about the next job and whether there's a gig at America's Got Talent
or wherever, the loser is the viewer who gets short-changed with an ending that
needed more care and more episodes. The ending of Game of Thrones suffers from a lack of proper narrative structure, a forced plot and a forced end-point that in turn
forces characters to suddenly change. It leaves too many gaps and unanswered
questions.
Multiple,
multiple scenes, story-arcs, plot points and story and character development
have been set-up since the first season and continue to wind throughout the
various seasons, to which there are no pay-offs in the final season and the
final episode. It leaves viewers empty and wondering: What was the point?
The characters
and story of the Game of Thrones TV version will always remain beloved and have
made a permanent, global pop culture imprint, South Africa and Africa
included.
We will
continue to love to love them ("You know nothing Jon Snow") and
continue to love to hate them (oh, Cersei!), despite the Lord of the
Rings-esque ending as they literally sail and walk off into the sunset and the
snow.
The end of a TV
show doesn't need to answer or pay off everything but Game of Thrones is not as
good as it could have been because it provides less, and less fitting, answers
that what a sprawling fantasy magnum opus like this should.
We've lived
with these people. Parts of us died when they (and some dragons) died. We've
journeyed with them and the Dothraki to strange new worlds and lands and
watched them not just fight against a collective foe but battle each
other.
For years we
patiently waited for winter to come. Yet, in the end, we can't help but be
disappointed when we finally got to see what happened with, and had to say
goodbye, to the Snow.
Episodes of Game of Thrones broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101) are
currently available on DStv Now and Showmax, and will be followed by the
broadcast of a 2-part “Making of” documentary showing what happened
behind-the-scenes.
You simply won't believe the problem that a M-Net viewer and DStv subscriber had on Monday morning and asked MultiChoice to help with.
It all started when a DStv subscriber on social media very early on Monday morning told MultiChoice that "I didn't pay the DStv subscription for this sh*t".
DStv innocently enquired as to what's wrong, saying "Let us help. What's seems to be the problem?"
"Game of Thrones, that's the problem," noted Asaaba.
"Please give us more details about the problem you have," DStv asked on Twitter.
"Where do I even start??" responded Asaaba. "Last night's episode was crap. We expected more from them. Especially XXXXXXX death, I hope XXX not dead or else we're cancelling our subscription".
Hilariously another DStv subscriber chimed in: "They need to remake this episode. We will not accept this".
MultiChoice and M-Net of course, don't make the fantasy drama series - HBO in America does with the penultimate episode that was broadcast on Monday morning at 03:00 at the same time as in the United States as an Express from the US title.
The episode will be broadcast on Monday night at 22:00 on M-Net.
Worldwide Game of Thrones fans have increasingly been in uproar over the disappointing direction of the final season, criticising the misguided character motivations, deaths and character actions that don't feel earned, and seeing the last remaining episodes as a let-down to the sprawling story that has been set up for almost a decade.
HBO is responding after the director, editors, production crew and everybody else who worked on and saw the 4th episode of its fantasy drama series Game of Thrones before its broadcast this week, forgot and missed a modern-day coffee cup with a plastic lid that viewers quickly spotted in the 4th episode of the 8th season.
The coffee cup from a local coffee shop in Northern Ireland where the "The Last of the Starks" was filmed, wasn't spotted by the art department or executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and neither by any of the editing in post-production.
Yet, it's clearly visible on the table before Emilia Clarke's "Mother of Dragons" character Daenerys Targaryen in the episode of the series broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101) with episodes this season also made available on MultiChoice's subscription video-on-demand(SVOD) service, Showmax.
"The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered a herbal tea," said HBO in a short statement trying to make light of the production error.
If the Nightwalker King were still alive, Melisandre the Green Man would probably have made him spin in his fire grave beyond the big mall.
Companies doing pandering product marketing messaging and passé consumer communication is nothing new. It's what most of them do.
While they often really can't care less about the actual service or product, most of them mostly do it just good enough so that their lack of actual proper effort, lack of attention to detail and superficiality are not made that obvious to ordinary consumers.
More and more examples, however, keep surfacing of just how little care and lack of proper effort MultiChoice - encompassing its divisions of M-Net and Showmax - has been putting into its localised marketing messaging, publicity and unified corporate communication for HBO's 8th and final season of Game of Thrones on DStv.
It feels as if MultiChoice, M-Net and Showmax were all perfectly fine to collectively ride the dragon tails of HBO's global PR and marketing machine that drove the build-up and buzz of the new season of Game of Thrones until the show's first episode started last week and until it became their collective responsibility to take over the Jon Snow fur cloak mantle for messaging to the media and the public in South Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa.
Then, like the Wall, that image collapsed.
While the actual cinema screening itself and watching the 8th season premiere episode of Game of Thrones on a big screen was great, the whole execution around it by M-Net, Nu Metro and Johnnie Walker in South Africa was tardy and decidedly just way off-message,off-brand, insufficient and ... weirwood weird.
Add things like the big screen showing in Nairobi by MultiChoice Africa's DStv Kenya (also executed in conjunction with M-Net and Johnnie Walker) that there, for example, had a beautiful, live string quartet playing the Game of Thrones theme music beforehand.
It's showed up the wildly differing experiential execution (or marketing "activation" as they say) for HBO's Game of Thrones in South Africa and Africa - and not done or overseen well - from under the marketing umbrella of the very same overall company that is MultiChoice.
Showmax that managed to send trinkets to some media beforehand, like for instance a local Game of Thrones aftershow, didn't really bother with any messaging effort to actually do something about its acquisition and roll-out of Game of Thrones.
Then MultiChoice, after being dismissive last week to DStv subscribers when its DStv Now and M-Net channel on its streaming version crashed for Game of Thrones in South Africa and across Africa, was completely reactive and way late in properly apologising without having to be asked, and to do so quickly.
What irks is when the lack of anything beyond mere superficial words and hollow actions in marketing and messaging become so noticeable that you can't miss (or dismiss) it.
Making it worse is when a person or a place pretends to care and does pandering fan service but in the process reveals how little they really know or even care.
Looking at MultiChoice's tweet, it clearly carelessly wrote and compiled it without any real regard for, real knowledge of, or real thought about Game of Thrones on Monday night this week at 21:00.
Why is MultiChoice talking about a "Nightwalker King" (it's Night King, nightwalkers are prostitutes)?
Why the use of "nearing" Westeros (the entire in-show universe is Westeros; what should have been here was the word Winterfell)?
Why is MultiChoice and M-Net still punting the old pre-show trailer long after the first episode had already been shown, together with a date that has come and gone, instead of the new and available episode 2 teaser?
Why does nobody seem to care?
It's emblematic of and reveals the messaging problem and attention-deficit that MultiChoice and its content playout brands as a collective have for Game of Thrones in South Africa and Africa.
It conveys an attitude of "let's do 'less-than' because the consumer won't care or notice".
It keeps with the same-old pandering, barely-there, extremely corny and never-evolving season 1 circumscription of the show because nobody seems to care about the detail.
Well, people do care.
And MultiChoice - with brands like Showmax, DStv and M-Net who collectively should be working better together overall on something like Game of Thrones - should care more when they reach out to the public and the media.
It should have done and should be doing better, spot-on messaging that should brim with relevancy, accuracy and convey a sense of excitement.
Instead, consumers who pay for content and potential consumers they try to attract are saddled with lame nonsense in a half-hearted effort to try and feign a "we're also a part of it" feeling.
Broadcasters and TV services should put in the real effort and the actual time to watch and get to know the content bought, and then put together holistic communication efforts that reflect a true in-show in-the-know zeitgeist - not one that constantly seems to look like it's 7 seasons behind.
The second episode of the latest 8th season of HBO's Game of Thrones seen on M-Net (DStv 101) again leaked, just like last week, before the official broadcast, again leading to millions of people worldwide illegally downloading and sharing it globally before its proper TV airing.
Last week before the debut of the 8th season, the first episode of the fantasy drama series was accidentally released by the American pay-TV service DirecTV on its DirecTV Now service four hours before it was supposed to become available at the 03:00 broadcast time in the morning, South African time.
On Sunday is happened again when Amazon Prime Video in Germany accidentally made the second episode available too early, with the episode that found its way to the Openload website from where it spread across the world even though it was immediately removed from Openload.
Already multiple grab-and-uploads of the season's second episode are swirling across the interweb torrents.
Amazon Prime Video in a statement says "We regret that for a short time Amazon customers in Germany were able to access episode 2 of season 8 of Game of Thrones. This was an error and has been rectified".
In the past pay-TV operator Star India leaked the 4th episode of the 7th season when 4 workers breached its data management system and saw the episode go viral globally.
That was followed by HBO Spain and HBO Nordic territories just a few weeks later in August 2017 that accidentally leaked the full high definition penultimate episode of the 7th season of Game of Thrones days before its supposed broadcast date that also saw that episode instantly go global.
To prevent something like that happening from Africa and M-Net possibly falling victim to something similar or a leak, M-Net already twice upgraded and made mandated improvements as requested by HBO to safeguard digital video content.
HBO audited M-Net's broadcast facilities and its content security standard operating procedures (SOP) regarding content management, storage and playout that have been put in place specifically for Game of Thrones.
Streaming services crashing over GoT
Last week the British pay-TV service Sky's streaming of the first episode of Game of Thrones' 8th crashed on its Now TV app on Apple TV set-top boxes and on the HBO Nordic streaming service in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
In America, HBO's streaming services HBO Go and HBO Now also crashed today again because of Game of Thrones, just like last week, and in New Zealand pay-TV streaming viewers are also frustrated again like last week.
After the linear broadcast of the second episode of Game of Thrones, that South African viewers will see at 22:00 tonight, New Zealand subscribers of the Sky pay-TV service have been unable to access the episode on its Neon catch-up service.
Although the same thing also happened last week in New Zealand but just affecting the Game of Thrones episode, this time the entire Neon service in New Zealand crashed with customers unable to watch any series or movies.
Talk the Thrones remains the best aftershow for HBO's Game of Thrones seen on M-Net (DStv 101) and Showmax, with the American video podcast that is back to comment on every episode of the 8th and final season of the fantasy drama series.
At the same time it's very odd to note how Showmax as a video streaming service, and with months and months to plan, did absolutely nothing to create and make a weekly South African aftershow video podcast about Game of Thrones available that it could easily have done.
Coming in cheaper than its cheaply-produced and embarrassing Runnin' with Skhumba, a South African Game of Thrones aftershow can easily have high production values and add a lot of content value to a service like Showmax with three or so informed experts around a desk talking about their favourite fantasy show and filming them.
Now Talk the Thrones is back, now on The Ringer, with weekly episodes released right after Game of Thrones episodes in which the panel of experts once again discuss, analyse, dissect and speculate about what they've seen in the latest episode.
The must-watch Talk the Thrones is the renamed After the Thrones aftershow that M-Net brilliantly grabbed and added in 2016 for Game of Thrones' 6th season in 2016 as a companion show that it would broadcast on its then M-Net Edge channel after episodes of Game of Thrones.
Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan discussed and analysed every Game of Thrones episode and while M-Net dropped it for the 7th season when it moved to Twitter and was renamed Talk the Thrones, it remained additional must-watch television for fans of the fantasy book and TV series.
Personally, I've watched it and have seen every single episode since its aftershow covering the 6th season and now Talk the Thrones is back on The Ringer and can be watched on Twitter or YouTube weekly since this past Monday.
Chris Ryan is back, this time with Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion who were guest panellists in previous seasons. If you like Game of Thrones, you will very likely enjoy the very deep and highly-informed Talk the Thrones discussion.
The odd thing however is that MultiChoice's subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service Showmax that is looking for content and new local content, and is also carrying the 8th season of Game of Thrones, did absolutely nothing to try and secure something like Talk the Thrones - or to create or carry it's own local South African version.
Making episodes available at the same time as M-Net (DStv 101) on Mondays at 22:00, Showmax has come across as seemingly somewhat desperate and over-zealous in efforts to also try and cash in on the big Game of Thrones craze in the run-up to the new 8th season.
Yet, where it matters beyond mere marketing and where something like a cool little local aftershow could have made a real brand differentiation for Showmax, Showmax did ... nothing.
It would have been absolutely great for viewers and fans of Game of Thrones - and for Showmax - to set it apart further from M-Net if it could have said something like: "After watching Games on M-Net on Mondays at 22:00 - or why not just watch it on Showmax from the beginning - stay without switching and watch The Games Show on Showmax where we discuss everything you want to talk about and simply need to know after the latest episode of Game of Thrones".
Or what about getting Talk of Thrones? Although not local content, just like it was on M-Net Edge, it would have been a perfect video streaming add-on addition for Showmax, and perfectly suited for what a video streaming service is and should be.
The aftershow keeps a viewer already watching Game of Thrones engaged and watching even longer, just like what M-Net did.
If you know television, you would know that genre and fantasy show fans who simply can't get enough of this stuff and this specific show, would definitely tune in to an explainer aftershow about Game of Thrones.
Showmax could have easily gotten some really informed and obsessed South African fans, experts and TV critics together around a table with a mic and a video camerar for a unique aftershow for which zero licensing intricacies are required.
Just like what SuperSport does with after-match analysis and experts weighing-in with a separate show that is related, yet unrelated to the visual content of the actual match, aftershow series and video podcasts discussing drama series from The Walking Dead and Star Trek: Discovery to The Orville and whatnot allow fans and viewers to get even more insights, commentary and analysis of what they're already watching and really like to hear and see and find out more of.
What a wasted opportunity for local content by Showmax and a wasted opportunity to cash in on the enthusiasm under South African and African viewers for a hugely popular show.
What happens now is that really committed viewers who want even more content and analysis around Game of Thrones leave M-Net and Showmax as platforms and then go elsewhere to YouTube and Twitter to find great aftershows like Talk the Thrones, where if Showmax offered something more, some very likely would have stayed put for longer.
UPDATE: Wow. Some more context after some more online content discovery.
So there already actually exist South African produced Game of Thrones aftershow podcasts. Who knew? Well, Showmax knew, and not only that, but has engaged with some of them and sent them stuff.
A podcast called The Night's Watch is done by entertainment content creator Lelo Boyana, with Pearl Boshomane Tsotetsi and Thabang Phetla.
Showmax literally took the time and effort and spend money to make and send to some of the media covering Game of Thrones in South Africa, personalised things like this - including to The Night's Watch - that it actually knew about.
Really?
Why didn't Showmax rather partner up and invest properly a bit of money to bring something like The Night's Watch as add-on, local content to its platform and to make it a thing? It would have been great if something like this was actually on Showmax from when the 8th season of Game of Thrones began.
