House of the Dragon Creator Admits The Show's Most Frustrating Failure
Amid sometimes overwhelmingly positive feedback for the series, there were also a lot of complaints from viewers who sometimes couldn't even fathom what exactly was going on on-screen. Needless to say, it was incredibly frustrating.
"The feedback was certainly heard. I get it," that's what House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal told The Hollywood Reporter when asked about some of the show's episodes being too dark to watch on TV. "We want the show to be a great viewing experience for everybody."
Condal also added that the show looked great in post-production and looked great on his TV.
"But when you release a Star Wars film, you're releasing it in theaters. For TV, you're releasing it onto a million different television screens and different setups and calibrations all over the planet."
The showrunner went a little bit further in his explanation of how the whole scheme works. So, the show is also released through different distributors who in turn distribute it in 4K or 1080p or 1080i, etc. That makes it hard to account for everybody's TVs and their calibrations and sometimes the file can get compressed. This is the reason why the series can look very different to what was approved and released in first place.
The "GloomGate" has broken out within the HoTD fandom following the release of Episode 7, Driftmark. A lot of fans who watched it found certain scenes being "gloomy". Then one of the fans addressedHBO Max on Twitter urging the network to "issue a written apology for literally a whole episode of black screen."
HBO Max Help tweeted back saying "the dimmed lighting of this scene was an intentional creative decision."
But judging by Ryan Condal's interview with The Hollywood Reporter it looks like the criticism has been taken aboard. Still, we'll be able to check if it's true when Season 2 is out.
It is not for the first time that the franchise came under fire from its fans. Game of Thrones final-season episode The Long Night also got its fair share of criticism for being too dark. Back in 2019 Fabian Wagner, the episode's cinematographer and the holder of two Creative Emmy Awards (one for GoT and the other for Sherlock ) told The Wired that viewers just couldn't adjust their TV settings right.
"A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don't know how to tune their TVs properly. A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway."
The production of House of the Dragon Season 2 has started but filming isn't expected to end until summer 2023. Season 2 may premier sometime in 2024.