"Game of Thrones" Director Promises Huge Battle in Penultimate Episode

Scene from "Blackwater" Episode, Courtesy: Mashable
We have to wait until next Spring before we get to see what’s in store for the Lannisters, Starks, Targaryens and the rest of our favs on “Game of Thrones,” but at least we're getting some hints about the season.

In a recent interview with IFTN, British director Neil Marshall (director of the infamous “Blackwater” episode) provided some info on the penultimate episode he just wrapped directing. The ninth episode of season four features a huge battle that may even rival Blackwater.

When Marshall was asked for a spoiler-free bit about the production scale of the episode, he offered:

What I can say is that it’s a huge episode - a huge production. As far as I know the episode hasn’t been named yet but someone online suggested it might be called "Castle Black" but all I know is that it’s called episode nine! It’s kind of the same as "Blackwater," in a sense, in that these episodes are bigger than most of my films! They’re on the same scale as something like "Centurion," if not bigger. We have huge sets that they build - in the case of "Blackwater" it was a section of King's Landing. For this episode we didn’t have to build Castle Black, we already had it. But it’s an amazing set. They built another inside the Paint Hall for the top of the Wall, and that was so big it took up the entire studio. We got a special backdrop made for it and one of the things about Paint Hall that makes it quite unique is that it’s much taller than most film studios. The backdrop went around almost 360 degrees and it turned out that it’s the biggest backdrop in Europe. The outside stuff for the battle was shot at the Castle Black set, which is built on the side of a huge quarry North of Belfast. We had about 200 hundred or so extras. We also had a very large team of stuntmen including this amazing bunch of Hungarian stunt guys, and they were absolutely fantastic! Really great. This episode is loaded with stunts, effects gags and visual effects. It’s a very, very action-packed episode!

He also promised “a few beheadings” as well as setting people on fire, high falls and well, just a lot of fighting.

In addition to ‘Thrones,’ Marshall has recently recently shot two episodes of Michael Bay’s new pirate drama “Black Sails” and is heading “to Scandinavia for the English language adaptation of the Norwegian folklore horror film ‘Trollhunter.’”

Check back here for more “Game of Thrones” updates.

-Larissa Mrykalo