The Dragon King’s Arrival: “Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest” Sets Theatrical Release Date
Before Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen; before the Iron Throne and the Dance of the Dragons; there was him: Aegon I. The dragon king and realm-builder whose exploits set the foundation for all the events that have unfolded in Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a legendary conqueror who has been name-checked (and whose name has been given to his male relatives for years after) and referenced in these series time and again, is finally getting his own story on the big screen when Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest arrives in theaters on June 1, 2029.
There’s very little information available about the production, save for the identities of its talented director and scribe, Owen Harris (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Black Mirror) and Beau Willimon (Andor, Severance), respectively. That’s a good start, however.
The center of the tale is a little easier to parse—Aegon I, of course, the first leader of the Seven Kingdoms and the progenitor of the Targaryen dynasty. His name has echoed across Westerosi history for a reason—fueled by his dragons, Vhagar, Balerion, and Meraxes, Aegon I brought the continent’s warring, fragmented realms together and created a single empire. Things have not gone smoothly since. His family is notorious for their infighting; his dragons and their children have been loathed and feared in equal measure; and nobody ever did conquer Dorne, even though Aegon I tried.
This will be the first time we’ve ever seen the man on screen. We’ve seen various Aegons through the years—most recently Egg, winningly played by Dexter Sol Ansell in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, whose birth name is Aegon V Targaryen—but we’ll now get to see the man whose exploits built their world. The film will be set well before Game of Thrones, some 300 years earlier, and will likely include some of the most memorable sequences in Martin’s “Fire & Blood.” Those might include the Mutilated Messenger (the spark that sets off the war is an insult from the Storm King, Argilac Durrandon, to Aegon, when he chops Aegon’s messenger’s hands off), the birth of King’s Landing, and the Burning of Harrenhal, when Aegon flies Balerion and burns King Harren of Harrenhal’s forces before breaking into the fortress.
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Featured image: Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
