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House of the Dragon is igniting its fanbase ahead of Season 2 and setting records at Max.
To kick off the Season 2 marketing campaign for the Game of Thrones prequel series, HBO and Max released dueling House of the Dragon trailers on March 21. The Green trailer showcases Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and her supporters, “The Greens” (named for the colors of House Hightower), and the Black trailer features Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her supporters, “The Blacks” (named for the red and black colors of House Targaryen).
With the dueling trailers and a tagline stating, “All Must Choose,” HBO was looking to make fans active participants in House of the Dragon’s marketing ahead of Season 2’s June 16 release, letting viewers show support for their respective side through views, shares and hashtags. And the move paid off.
HBO and Max exclusively told ADWEEK that the trailers scored more than 80 million global video views in the first 72 hours, setting a record for the best-performing trailer for any original series since the streaming platform (formerly HBO Max) launched in 2020. Additionally, the marketing stunt resulted in the most-talked-about trailers since the platform’s premiere, with social conversation volume reaching more than 280,500 posts.
However, firing up a fandom isn’t easy.
“Creating one big trailer is work, but to do two at the same time was a bit of a risk,” Steven Cardwell, vp of originals marketing for HBO and Max, told ADWEEK. “You’re always worried: Is only one going to get shown? How are people going to know there are two? Are they going to cannibalize one another?”
Achieving House of the Dragon’s dueling trailers took months of planning, and for a VFX-heavy dragon show, finished shots are sometimes hard to come by weeks in advance.
Cardwell added, “When you’re working this far out, a lot of the conversation is about, ‘What can we show and what do we actually have?’”
In addition to logistical hurdles, Cardwell noted that—though the struggle between The Greens and The Blacks is a central part of the Targaryen civil war in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood novel—the terms weren’t often mentioned in Season 1.
“It was really about how were we going to create a platform that would be accessible for more casual fans of the series or even newcomers, but also for book fans who were going to understand the vernacular of green and black,” Cardwell said. “It was definitely an idea from the books that we wanted to create an opportunity for fans to cosign.”
