HBO Max, as everyone knows, will be the home of every one of Warner Brothers’ planned movie releases in 2021, in addition to Wonder Woman 1984 next week. On Thursday, the network put out a brief reel of its “Epic Lineup through 2022”—while also confirming that its long-awaited Game of Thrones spinoff, House of the Dragon, will arrive that year. 

The House of the Dragon teaser is very brief, but it does represent the first footage of the new Game of Thrones series, as well as confirmation, at least, of what year the show will be arriving. After the original shows being touted by HBO, a card says “and coming in 2022,” before featuring footage of a dragon growling and breathing fire. This precedes a logo, which includes the words House of the Dragon in a similar font to that of Game of Thrones.

Back in October, it was announced that actor Paddy Considine was the new show’s first confirmed cast member. The veteran of the Bourne series will portray King Viserys I, who is chosen to become king, as part of the House Targaryen. His character is an ancestor of the Targaryens from the main Game of Thrones series, such as Daenerys. 

It’s not a huge surprise that we won’t see House of Dragon until 2022, since if its production process is anything like that of Game of Thrones, it will be an intense, time-consuming production, likely produced in multiple countries over a long period of time, even before the special effects are taken into account. 

Near the end of the run of Game of Thrones, HBO commissioned several ideas for spinoffs, based on different aspects of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, which established a centuries-long chronology that went far beyond what was seen in the original Game of Thrones show. The network had previously announced a different prequel series, and even named a cast, before pulling the plug on it and moving ahead with House of the Dragon instead. It’s unclear if any more spinoffs are still in the works.

The HBO Max reel released this week didn’t dwell much on the Warner movies, with the exception of Wonder Woman;  it mostly featured 2021 HBO originals, such as the miniseries Mare of Easttown, new seasons of Insecure and Succession, the upcoming special episode of Euphoria, the two-part documentary about Tiger Woods, the revival of Gossip Girl, a docuseries about Nicki Minaj, the Steven Soderbergh-directed original movie No Sudden Move, the long-awaited Friends reunion special, and of course, the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League.

Presumably, HBO will eventually release a separate reel featuring those 2021 movies, which include Dune, and the Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark.

Thanks to the deal reached by the parties earlier this week, Roku users will be able to watch all of those shows without the need for any sophisticated tech workaround. 

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.