Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013).
For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.
Many have ascended the Seven Kingdoms’ Iron Throne, the most prized seat of George R.R. Martin’s blockbuster A Song of Ice and Fire saga.
But it is a station built on daggers, and few have lasted long; as the events of HBO’s Game of Thrones detailed.The difference for Paddy Considine’s King Viserys is that the expiry date is built right in.
He ascends the throne in the first episode of the prequel series House of the Dragon, which starts on HBO Sunday night. But given that the events of the show take place 200 years before those of Thrones, and that Thrones kicks off with Viserys’s Targaryen dynasty in shreds, we’re aware from the outset that things are likely to go horribly wrong.Still, Game of Thrones assured us from the outset that nothing lasts forever, and it still lasted eight seasons of intrigue and dragons.
Ryan J. Condal’s prequel doubles down on both, as Viserys weathers various challengers to his dominion, including his brother Daemon [Matt Smith] and his cousin Rhaenys [Eve Best].It is perhaps a surprising choice for Considine, best known for an accomplished career in British independent cinema, whose storied collaboration with director Shane Meadows yielded several celebrated features including Dead Man’s Shoes, and whose own accomplishments as a director, with the films Tyrannosaur and Journeyman, have been critically acclaimed.
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