Jay Roewe, HBO’s senior vice president of global incentives and production planning, said the auction – a chance for fans to “grab a piece of history” – speaks to the staying power the series has had five years after its finale.
“Game Of Thrones was a zeitgeist moment in our culture. It was a zeitgeist moment in high-end television. It was a zeitgeist moment in terms of HBO,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is something we all grew up with. It’s impacted every single one of our lives. It’s impacted the culture, and Game Of Thrones has meant something to every single person.”
Although the series started in 2011 and several items in the auction date back to then, they have not been “collecting dust,” Roewe said. HBO had been carefully preserving thousands of props, costumes and set pieces since the series began for use on potential spinoffs or sequels. With House Of The Dragon having recently completed its second season and other projects firmly in development – while others have been discarded – Roewe said the studio now knows what they’ll need to hold on to and what they can part ways with.
“These items have been curated and taken care of since we finished filming. They are the quality that they were when we finished filming, and we’ve had people working on them for years to keep them in shape,” he said. “We don’t need them anymore. It’s time to finally open it up to the world.”
Beyond the preservation and quality of the items, the sheer scale of the auction required months of collaboration with HBO and countless hours of research and planning to organise, said Joe Maddalena, the executive vice president of Heritage Auctions.
Maddalena wanted to ensure fans and collectors didn’t feel like there were any “glaring holes” in the collection by including a wide variety of characters’ costumes and props, displayed in a 750-page catalogue. There are even multiples of crucial items like Arya Stark’s rapier Needle, of which there were several versions throughout the series’ run.
The intricate nature and craftsmanship of the costumes and props are part of what make the show so memorable, Maddalena, a fan himself, said. Emmy-winning costume designer Michele Clapton has been praised since the series’ start for the detailed and intentional designs that fueled storylines. The catalogue features interviews with Clapton, showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss and several of the cast members commenting on the episode-specific usage and significance of hundreds of the items. Maddalena called this kind of access and information “uncharted territory” in the auction world.
“You don’t usually get studio-sanctioned auctions like this. This is studio sanctioned,” he said. “Everything comes from the archive. Everything was handpicked, scene specific. You know where your piece was used. You know it was actually used on screen.”
For fans who want to snag a piece of Game Of Thrones, the vast collection is now open for preliminary bidding with the auction taking place Oct 10-12 through Heritage Auctions in Dallas. The collection will be available to preview in the auction house’s New York and London locations starting Sep 17 through Oct 4.
Source: CNA
