The Night King has the largest army in the world, with at least 100,000 soldiers at his command. But as this featurette from Game of Thrones shows, the challenge in putting together a massive army of the dead was nothing compared to creating just one single, very special wight who was needed for a memorable appearance in King’s Landing.
In this latest clip from HBO‘s behind-the-scenes series The Game Revealed, the show explores how the wight that Jon Snow and his Snow-icide Squad captured north of the Wall required an outsized amount of special effects work—both practical and CGI. As the episode’s director Jeremy Podeswa says, that one wight was “way more complicated than 10,000 wights, because you’re dealing with a wight with a lot of detail.”
That wight looked terrifying even with the green screen cloth still visible. Although it’s really funny to think how there was a real performer under all of that incredible makeup. Imagine what it must be like for him now to talk to people about his job.
“Oh, do I know you from anything?”
“Uh, yes, I played the zombie that scared the crap out of Cersei.”
“Oh my god you were so good! Did it hurt when the Hound cut you in half?”
The amount of work that went into this one sequence is remarkable, especially because when you watch the final product you can’t see any of it. It just looked like a real zombie running around. This also might explain why it took the Night King seven years to get through the Wall. He didn’t need a dragon, he just needed a lot of time to make 100,000 of them.
What did you think of this scene? How did this wight compare to past zombies? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Images: HBO
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