Ryan Condal

No build-up needed: “Dragon” is in battle mode

Amid all the “Games of Thrones” extremes, all the sex and spectacle and such, a pattern emerged.
Viewers got used to “a slow build and then there’s an explosion — maybe midway through and then certainly near the end” of a season, said Ryan Condal, writer-producer of “House of the Dragon” (shown here) a “Thrones” prequel.
That’s what makes the third “House” season such a surprise: It starts (9 p.m. Sunday, June 21, on HBO and HBO Max) in full battle mode.
“I think it’s going to put people back on their heels,” Condal said, in a Zoom press conference. “It just comes out so heavy and unexpectedly.” Read more…

It’s time for size-and-spectacle, season two

This is a question many of us might ponder: What is it like to ride one of Hollywood’s make-believe dragons?
“It’s just like riding a dragon in real life,” Eve Best semi-explained. “It’s deeply uncomfortable.”
She should know. She’s Princess Rhaenys in “House of the Dragon” (shown here), the “Game of Thrones” prequel that starts its second at 9 p.m. Sunday (June 16) on HBO and Max. Late in the first season, she had a dragon-riding escape that fans considered spectacular.
Best will have to take their word for it. “I’ve never seen it (the show),” she claimed, in that dry, British way. “I heard it’s fantastic.”
And the new season could be bigger. It has “two sequences that outstrip the size and spectacle of anything in Season One,” said producer Ryan Condal, Read more…