A Possible New Location in Iceland; Another Game of Thrones Actor Returns for Season 7! 

would be returning to Iceland for the filming the of season 7, but there’s been no news whatsoever on locations there since then. In previous years, the country’s glacial vistas have served as scenery beyond the Wall, while some of the greener areas have stood in for portions of Arya and the Hound’s journey. With

 delaying filming this year in hopes of more wintry settings, it seemed likely the show would head back to Iceland’s snowier sections but we couldn’t be sure.

Today however, we received a report from a reader who was traveling through the south of Iceland recently and found something interesting. Near the area of Stangarvegur, in the Gjáin valley, 

reader Gary came across a set in the works and snapped a few photos.

According to Gary, the set was found near a hydroelectric dam. The site is apparently “closed for construction” until November 2018, but this small area was the only construction taking place. As you can see, there is a fake icy-stone alley being constructed. A local shopkeeper close by the site also referred to the location as being for

filming location, what could it be? Given the rumors we’ve heard about wights, a trip beyond the Wall this next season seems likely. An icy passageway like this could be used to help create part of a treacherous journey or fight.

Either way, we’ll keep our eyes on Iceland and this location in the coming months!

Meanwhile in Spain, location shooting continues in Seville. Filming didn’t quite wrap up at Italica when we initially assumed. We’ve learned from sources that Lena Headey, Kit Harington, Gwendoline Christie, Liam Cunningham, Rory McCann and possibly others were still shooting in Italica as of yesterday, and there may be more work to be done. A possible overrunning of the shooting schedule? We’ve also heard that several of these members of the cast will be heading back to Belfast at the end of this week, and not part of the next block of Spain filming.

Shooting is due to start at other sites in Seville, and we’ve just learned that another cast member has turned up in Cáceres, the Extremadura province city and region that will host filming for about a month.

James Faulkner made a strong impression in season 6 as Samwell Tarly’s unbelievable jerk of a father Randyll Tarly in “Blood of My Blood.” Now, his return for season 7 has been more or less confirmed by a sighting in Cáceres.

The actor shared a photo of himself from Spain:

Causing a bit of stir up the dentist. Hang on to those molars, Popey. #DaVincisDemons #givethemabite pic.twitter.com/onoAFXXN8Z

And one of the fans he met retweeted the photo with her tags indicating she’d met him in Cáceres specifically. (Instituto Dental IOS is the dental clinic he visited there.)

Un encanto de persona. @jamessfaulkner . Gracias por confiar en nosotros #JuegodeTronos #Cáceres #InstitutoDentalios https://t.co/x7OwepeVAA

If there was any question, Faulkner also posted a photo of himself working with a horse yesterday, with the caption, “Randyll on the razzle…..with the ‘Duke\'”:

Randyll on the razzle…..with the ‘Duke’. #GameofThrones #Sinderby #Popey #UncleGeoffrey pic.twitter.com/ArUQ1CDRIG

The Cáceres area could play many roles, with its King’s Landing-like Old Town plus Tarly could take part in the Malpartida action as well.

reports filming for the Las Brenas scene will take only a few days, and will start shooting on Nov. 17th.

He’s not the first cast member to show up in the city- Jerome Flynn was spotted in Cáceres a few days ago.

Having trouble keeping all the dates and info straight? Check out Luka’s Season 7 Pre-Filming Report for Southern Spain, rounding up all the details.

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Las Breñas being such a brief shoot is a shock. The flawed original report didn’t come from me or WOTW, but I did believe it and reported on it with gusto. I was sure this location in Malpartida would take most of the Cáceres shoot.

Instead, just a few days! So the ambush will probably not be a big setpiece on-screen, even if in the story it’s supposed to be a battle (which I still believe.) I now wonder what may take most of the month of filming in Cáceres. The city’s Old Town as King’s Landing was my initial guess, but that seems like WAY too much time for the production to have one of the city’s landmarks and public squares closed down. So honestly I have no idea. The only alternatives I see are the following: The nearby Barruecos shoot will be the long shoot after all; Javi’s scoop is wrong and Las Breñas will take longer; there is some other unknown location; or they’ll take an unusual number of vacation days between filming locations. The whole one-month Cáceres shoot ceases to make much sense if most of it isn’t reserved for a big setpiece battle filmed in an empty field. The incongruity bothers me. I hope we get to clear this up for you guys in the coming days. Sorry if I hyped up the big set-piece battle too much. I was hyped up myself, based on all available evidence.

The possible Iceland location looks great, though! I am looking forward to see true wintry locales again. Season 2 in particular had some amazing vistas. I hope we get some more of that, except with more budget to film on location.

Amazing photos, it looks like they’ve been working on this for a while now, everybody has been so focused on the frenzy in Spain, I completely forgot about Iceland.

Maybe the passage will be a way for the White Walkers to cross the Wall without completely tearing it down. Whatever it’s purpose is, it will certainly have something to to with the Wall, there’s no two ways about it.

altough there hasn’t been a confirmation of that yet.

Really excited to see what happens, been waiting to see some movement up in the North. Thanks for the post Sue !

Well, that picture of the dam got me thinking about books and movies I’ve read/saw where a few men can hold an army back when in a enclosed space.

If true, with the wight hunt and Jon and co. getting ambushed by the Night King this would be a great spot for the Night King to ambush. Have wights falling from up high and attacking maybe from one side. Jon and company holding down a shield wall or line as the numbers just keep coming…till Dany arrives to burn stuff. Would be a neat scene imo, especially if leaks true about Vis. I could totally see wights hanging onto dragon wings and jumping down from up high to force the dragon to crash.

Also the last stand of Benjen could be done well here, he has that Flail if I recall.

You’re welcome. But mostly we have to thank Gary! 🙂

Yeah, it does seem a bit weird… but we’ll just have to wait and see. I try not to hold on too tight to any preceiceived ideas because we really know so little (I haven’t read the leaks, though I’ve gleaned quite a bit from careless comments here…)

Oh, and yay! for Randyll Tarly! Faulkner was excellent last season.

I wonder if House Tarly is abandoning House Tyrell (well, Lady Olenna) and going over to Cersei… And how Sam’s story ties in with this…

First off, the Icelandic location looks simply stunning. Beyond the Wall scenes in season two were made even more beautiful by the natural landscape, and even the greener parts of the country we saw in season four were amazing. I can’t wait to see what goes on in the scenes there for season seven, and hope that we get quite a bit of screen time there.

The departure of only some of the cast does suggest multiple scenes are being filmed in Italica (or that it is one large scene that they can film different cast members for separately). I can’t wait to see what this set looks like on-screen; the pictures of it that we saw before preparations started were awesome.

Delighted to see James Faulkner back as Randyll Tarly – I hate the character in both the books and the show, but absolutely loved his performance. He completely nailed it as Sam’s emotionally-abusive dad, and I look forward to seeing more of him in season seven.

You do know that Wun Wun is a shortened name or nickname for Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun, not a hyphenated verb, right? 😛

BTW, I’m not sure the sides of that cutting (canyon) are the work of the possible GoT crew. In my country, tunnels, road cuttings etc. are often sprayed with concrete to keep them from crumbling during the freeze-thaw cycles. That’s exactly how they look. A great look for GoT, anyway!

Oh wow those pictures of the icy passageway are interesting. And Faulkner with the horse is actually endearing. Never thought I’d say that about Randyll Tarly’s actor. 🙂

That’s a good guess but I don’t really see how a dragon could fit in there. It looks pretty narrow. There are also a bunch of red and green markers on both sides, you can see them better in the second photo. Now I’m no technical expert but those are probably for CGI terraforming purposes, I’d imagine they would need a much bigger, more open space to bring a dragon in, maybe breathe fire from afar or in the air but they would need some sort of equipment to lift Emilia up that high. Do we have an engineer around here to shed some light on these photos ?

It’s good place to show us white walkers and army of wights marching on the Wall but it can also be good for fight against wights. It’s not open space and good room to actually defend themselves. It’s looking beautiful.

Only Kit. If Dany comes on dragons, it will be shoot in NI and not Iceland.

I really needed these beautiful pictures of Iceland right now. Thank you Sue.

We’ve learned from sources that Lena Headey, Kit Harington, Gwendoline Christie, Liam Cunningham, Rory McCann and possibly others were still shooting in Italica as of yesterday, and there may be more work to be done. A possible overrunning of the shooting schedule? We’ve also heard that several of these members of the cast will be heading back to Belfast at the end of this week, and not part of the next block of Spain filming.

I can see Gwendoline, Rory and Lena going back to Belfast for their North and KL scenes. Kit will probably go back to London, since I don’t see much Belfast filming for him without Emilia or Peter there. And they will be needed for the ambush scene.

You’re probably right. That’s unfortunate, I was hoping we’d

see her in the harsh northern environment this season but I think she’s just gonna be indoors in NI.

Do we know which actors are going back to Belfast at the end of this week ? That might provide us with some clues though I imagine Emilia still has a lot of shooting left to do in Spain.

good to see that the last living Worst Father in Westros will be back. Probably will want to take Sam on a hunting trip.

Has there been any news of what’s up with Arya, Sansa, Bran or the other characters not filming in Spain?

(For Luka, this doth only mean I am excited! 🙂 )

Last season her speech to Dothraki was shoot in NI, saw behind the scenes footage of her against green screen on this sort mechanical bull. 😀 Or maybe they’ll do both and she will have a bit of filming in Iceland but most of it will be done in NI for sure.

Lannister vs Dothraki ambush sequence, so Emilia got some filming to do. Not all of it. Like Kit wasn’t at BOTB for everything. She’s got advantage that a lot of stuff with dragons is being shoot in NI at studios. But Emilia did said that she’s halfway done with filming.

the ambush. That is a really quick shoot for anything spectacular like BotB

I’m wondering if smaller parts of the ambush sequence or the scenes surrounding it weren’t already filmed in Belfast. Emilia posted a video from a windy field sometime in late Sep/early Oct that’s difficult to place if Dany reaches Dragonstone in the premiere. Could’ve been for a non-combat portion of the ambush scene.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Emilia ended up only spending a couple of days in Caceres (if she goes at all) before heading back to Belfast. Dany’s not a ground fighter, and most of the mounted dragon scenes are filmed in the studio, so I don’t see why they’d keep her in Spain any longer than absolutely necessary. Ditto for Peter and Nikolaj, although I expect the latter will hang back to film KL exteriors. It’s mainly the extras they need for the entire month.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Emilia isn’t required for the Iceland shoot. If she’s mounted the whole time, she could end up filming her entire involvement in that sequence in the studio in Belfast.

Not that surprised about the ambush in all honesty- I couldn’t envisage how that would take up very much screen-time. Perhaps there’ll be a larger battle in another scene, as I expected (hoped) that there’d be several battles in S7.

As for the Iceland set…. it screams out to me as being the Wall after falling and/ or being breached, with some additional CGI of course.

As per instagram videos and photos of yesterday, Alfie Allen was shooting too, he arrived with Kit, Gwen, Liam and gave out autographs to girls on the fence with the others.

If the wall falls before the season is over, this looks epic enough to be a close up of a huge crack forming before it crumbles? That or a good location for a WW scuffle.

Isn’t the ambush shot in Barrueco de Arriba, where they will shoot from 14Nov to 22 Dec? I thought all the spoiler from start mentioned that the ” battle” will be shot by the sea.

You might want to check out Luka’s round-up of the Spain details, it’ll clarify some things including the dates which we sometimes we receive conflicting reports of. http://watchersonthewall.com/southern-spain-pre-filming-report/

Also, Malpartida is the city/town name where Los Barruecos is located in.

I dont know if i beliave javi. Wotw sources said las brenas scene would take place from 14 november until 15 december, than this site HoY said the scene would e filmed from 19 november until 12 december. Now a new info….

And dont forget that emilia said in the emmy that s7 will have a epic huge battle. If she is not dumb as i think she is not, she wasnt refering to the big scene chasing a wight because everyone and their mothers know this chase is not a battle.

After a shock that the world woke up to ..Not at all surprised about ambush ..

Its always going to be like previous seasons episode 4 that dany gets .,a 10 to 15 mins scenes nothing more.

So much for termed as ” A conqueror but not ruler ” ..

It seems clear at this point that there’s been a small delay/overrun in filming in Spain due to the weather so that has caused a shifting of dates, so we have to take all dates with a grain of salt and not worry about them too much. The filming will happen.

So Samwell Tarly as Lord Paramount of the Reach pretty much confirmed?

In the books, the Tarlys will likely betray/finish the Tyrells and be given the Reach. Randyll and Dickon will eventually be offed one way or another and the title will pass onto Sam.

In the show, the Tyrells will likely go out with Olenna’s death and the Reach will be given to the Tarlys.

Randyll and Dickon get roasted (/S7 leaks) and the title passes onto Sam.

And to think that this is the last time like we will see our cast in such locations like Spain and other places makes me sad ..

Its a damn shame that a series as rich as this and a world as amazing as this with full of wonderful characters we love and love to hate is suffering from their own creators ..be it GRRM or D&D ..one is not quick enough or capable of meeting a deadline. ..while the other is rushing through the plot ..

I know that Javi is very trusted but he can be wrong and the month shooting can take place in Los Barruecos.. they only thing that changed is that Javi thought Las Breñas will be the location in Malpartida that the shooting will take place when it will be Los Barruecos,

The mayor made announcements for 20 mil, 500 extras have been casted and are being trained for a week before the battle, and the spanish newspapers report that they test smoke fire and brought a dosen of horses in Los Barruecos

There are multiple locations in play in a small area, with all the extras recruited for all of those locations. It would be a mistake to assume this soon. I’m more cautious- and I also don’t try to cram all the news into one post. 🙂

I don’t see the problem here? It was reported that we will have 22 shooting days in Los Barruecos, so the big battle scenes will be filmed there – where’s the big news?

Los Barruecos =/= Las Breñas. They’re nearby, but not exactly the same thing.

And yes, I know the long shooting period may simply happen in Barruecos instead. If you read the comment you just replied to, you know I considered that among the alternatives, given that they won’t film for long at Las Breñas 😉

Islandic location looks interesting. A crack in the Wall? Possibly. However, my first thought was a passage leading to the Bloody Gates of the Vale. I have already written, that the Vale story needs to be wrapped up somehow and preferably this season. First of all, from a purely political point of view: if Cersei manages to undermine Dany’s offensive by mid-season, her next target should be Jon and especially his allies. No way she can afford losing the Riverlands for the KITN: it would cut the Crownlands from her native Westerlands. Therefore Cersei will have to take actions to secure her grip over the Riverlands, as soon as Dany’s offensive slows down, and thet may lead to an attack on the Vale which now is as vulnerable as it can get. Not that vulnerable maybe, but Cersei will hardly get a better chance: Sweetrobin mentally unstable boy, the best men and commanders of the Vale are in the North, and Littlefinger may switch sides again, if that gives him an opportunity to climb one step up.

Moreover, there could have been some foreshadowing: in S1 Bronn claimed that he could take Eyrie; in S4 Sweetrobin threw a glass mocking-bird Littlefinger presnted to him through the Moon Door, etc.

the wight hunt will be performed by secondary characters like Beric, Thoros, Sandor, etc., [\spoiler] whereas the KITN will be doing more kingly things: namely blockingCerseii’s forces in that pathway leading to the Bloody Gates? BTW, Dany may arrive there too. Just a specullation…

As for Bronn and Randyl being at the ambush site, no surprise: they are supposed to be there. I wonder where is Jaime (NCW)? Still in the Dragonpit? Maybe, but I won’t be surprised, if he doesn’t show up.

And interesting news about Casères, but it’s probably worth to wait for more information.

My favorite moment was that scene in S6 finale, when we see baby Jon in Ned’s hands and the music is slowly rising, and the camera zooms in on Jon’s eyes and when the music is at it’s peak, we see the present adult Jon. Still gives me the goosebumps

I’m getting a Photoshop vibe from the Iceland photos, and all that equipment was just sitting there unattended? Yeah sure.

My favorite moment was that scene in S6 finale, when we see baby Jon in Ned’s hands and the music is slowly rising, and the camera zooms in on Jon’s eyes and when the music is at it’s peak, we see the present adult Jon. Still gives me the goosebumps

Luka Nieto: Las Breñas being such a brief shoot is a shock. The flawed original report didn’t come from me or WOTW, but I did believe it and reported on it with gusto. I was sure this location in Malpartida would take most of the Cáceres shoot.

In my opinion it never really made any sense for them to spent so much time and have such a big set piece for an ambush. It doesn’t seem as if this ambush will have huge consequences towards the story. So it wouldn’t make sense for them to invest so much time, money and energy into something that doesn’t seem that important.

The Battle of the Bastards is very different by comparison. It was a big and meaningful fight for the Starks and their survival, we saw a Stark die (a minor one but he was a Stark). The Battle of the Bastards was meaningful and a game changing fight, this ambush does not seem to be in that category, so there is no reason to spent so much time and money on it.

How will Sam get out of his Night’s Watch vows (“hold no lands…” etc.)? Doesn’t he care anymore (because of Gilly?)? I don’t think he’ll die and be ressurrected and get out like that, lol. Will a suitable

“pardon” him? (There’s some indication at least in the books that that can be done.)

I’m not against Sam coming to his inheritance as a big f*** you to his bullying father, though I also kind of like the idea of him becoming a maester who writes down the true history of the wars… (He won’t have time to become a maester within the scope of the show but maybe later.)

BTW, I haven’t read the leaks, so anybody replying, do not refer to them, please.

Nothing to do with the leaks but if the wall falls the night’s watch is done for And Sam will be free of his vows.

The first thing that came to mind about that icy passage was the entrance to the Erie. But it could also be beyond the wall or through the wall.

I know what you mean, those cliff faces look almost painted on, but if you spray concrete on quarried rock (tunnels, road cuttings etc.), that’s what it looks like, especially if low, soft sunlight is falling on parts of it (November in Iceland, the sun is very low). I’m not suggesting the GoT team sprayed the concrete, it’s a technique used in countries where there’s repeated freeze-thaw.

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