The premiere episode of “Dragon House”, the prequel series of “Game of Thrones”, was unexpectedly leaked to the Internet yesterday, apparently after it was uploaded to the servers of the streaming service HBOMax before its time. The series in question, the production of which reportedly cost between 150 and 200 million dollars, was supposed to launch tonight in the United States (and will also arrive on Israeli streaming platforms tomorrow). HBO has already announced an extensive hunt for the distributors of the pirated copies.
This is not the first leak that harms HBO’s flagship series: a few weeks ago, significant leaks from the entire season’s script were uploaded on Reddit, seemingly revealing all the main events expected in it, and in this case too, HBO announced an all-out battle against the leakers and distributors, and even went to court in California to force Reddit to reveal the users responsible for it. It should be noted that similar problems also characterized the last seasons of “Game of Thrones”.
HBO can perhaps take solace in the fact that among the viewers who took advantage of the leak to watch the first episode, there was a fairly high level of satisfaction, expressed by a score of 85% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes (not much lower than the 89% that the “Game of Thrones” premiere won). The series deals with the rise of House Traggrain, which is the house of the dragon and the house from which the queen of dragons, Dinaris Traggrain, rose, and it takes place 200 years before the plot of “Game of Thrones” in an era when dragons still terrorized the kingdom of Westeros.
“Dragon House” is largely based on George R.R. Martin’s book “Fire and Blood”, and stars Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Eva Best and many other very good British actors. The creators of the series, with the exception of Martin himself, are Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condell who were not involved in “Game of Thrones” at all. The leak comes at a very bad time for HBO, as its streaming service is rumored to be about to be swallowed up by the Discovery+ service and its parent corporation is demanding $3 billion in budget cuts. quite sad.