HBO has revealed that the first episode of its Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon recorded the network’s biggest premiere of all time.
Warner Bros Discovery said that the show recorded approximately 9.9 million views on Sunday (21 August) night in the US alone.
This viewership tally includes linear airings, as well as HBO Max streams during premiere night.
The original GoT series, on the other hand, closed out its run with 13.7 million viewers on linear channels for the finale in 2019.
It clocked over 19 million views with the addition of streaming and video-on-demand numbers.
House of the Dragon has the same lavish, medieval-fantasy aesthetic as the original GoT series, with lashings of castles, craggy countryside, and spike-furnished war rooms.
The cast of the series includes Milly Alcock, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, and Emma D’Arcy.
Alcock, who plays the role of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, recently opened up about the ways the blockbuster HBO series has changed her life.
“I never thought this would happen to me,” the Australian actor told Stellar magazine, according to JustJared.
“I was washing dishes in a restaurant, living in my mum’s attic. This doesn’t happen to people like me, so it was incredibly quick.”
Alcock said she was cooking dinner at a friend’s house when her agent told her she’d been cast in the fantasy series.
“I froze, and took a deep breath and said to my friend, ‘do you have wine?’ Then I called my mum,” she said.
