The 'Game of Thrones' Prequel Fills Out Its Cast, While Tony Soprano Will Appear in 'The Sopranos' Prequel

By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 8, 2019 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 8, 2019 |

Here’s some quick pop-culture items to peruse while you’re avoiding doing real work:

— The Game of Thrones prequel has cast eight new members to join Naomi Watts. They’re all unknown actors or up-and comers, but their names are Naomi Ackie, Denise Gough, Jamie Campbell Bower, Georgie Henley, Sheila Atim, Ivanno Jeremiah, Toby Regbo, and Alex Sharp. You can see their pictures over on THR, to see if you recognize anyone. The series, set thousands of years before Game of Thrones, takes place in Westeros and tracks its fall from the Golden Age of heroes to darkest moments, or, as the HBO logline puts it, “Only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend — it’s not the story we think we know.”

Speaking of Game of Thrones, HBO’s President Richard Plepler has seen the final six episodes, and this is his assessment, via Variety: “It’s a spectacle. The guys have done six movies. The reaction I had while watching them was, ‘I’m watching a movie.’”

I can’t wait to watch it on my phone. (I kid! Sort of!)

— The DC Universe series Stargirl has added Luke Wilson (hey! Luke Wilson!) to their cast. He’ll play Pat Dugan, and joins the lead Brec Bassinger (Nickelodeon’s Bella & the Bulldogs), Lou Ferrigno Jr., Brian Stapf, Henry Thomas, and Anjelika Washington. Geoff Johns, who created Stargirl, will run the show.

— Rachel Brosnahan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will host the first Saturday Night Live episode of the year, on January 19th. Greta Van Fleet will be the musical guest. Brosnahan just won her second Golden Globe for the Amazon series.

— If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a teaser trailer for the Amazon series Hanna, based on the bad-ass movie starring Saoirse Ronan. I loved the movie, but it didn’t seem big enough to warrant a TV series. It looks … cool? Esme Creed-Miles — the daughter of Samantha Morton — will play the lead, while Joel Kinnamon and Mireille Enos of The Killing will play her parents, I believe.

— We learned today that Tony Soprano will make an appearance in David Chase’s The Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, which takes place in the 1960s. It will obviously be a very young Tony Soprano.

— Finally, I find myself a little befuddled by what are apparently the most popular shows on Netflix, according to the analytics firm Jumpshot. It feels like everyone is cutting the cord so that they can watch … old network television shows?

The graphic was part of a larger article over on Vox about the trouble that Netflix is in once all the content owners pull their series from Netflix so that they can stream them on their own services. If that graphic is any indication, Netflix is, indeed, in big trouble. But big ups for to all those watching Big Mouth and Bojack.