HBONext week’s episode of Game of Thrones is the one we’ve all been waiting for, and the producers have been telling us all that it’s the biggest battle ever.
But how big is it actually going to be? Well, if the teaser for next week’s ‘Battle of the Bastards‘ is anything to go by, it’s going to make all other battles seem like mere skirmishes.
But what does it take to bring the full force of the Northern banner men and wildling armies to life?
Well, Entertainment Weekly have done the maths and it seems that making a fake army actually requires a real army!
Here’s the full list of everyone (including minerals and animals) involved:
600 crew members: That can be anyone from the bloke in charge of making sure everyone’s got a sword, to the person filming.
500 extras: These are the unlucky fellas playing the Snow and Bolton armies, and there’s a real rivalry between the two as both sides were trained separately to improve the battle. The VFX team then make the hundreds of men into thousands!
70 horses: Horses aren’t the easiest of animals to coordinate while filming, which is why only the biggest of movies usually use them. Plus, adding horses to a production usually doubles the time taken to film a scene, not to mention the expense.
160 tons of gravel: Heavy rain while filming in Northern Ireland made the fields extremely muddy which the horses didn’t like, forcing the production to bring in gravel to give the horses some traction.
25 stuntmen and women: You don’t really expect actors to fall off their horses and put up with Ramsay’s brutal attack do you?
25 shooting days: If that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, then you should probably know that your average episode takes seven to ten days of filming for a whole episode. These 25 days were just for the battle.
A shed-load of cash: There are no concrete figures for how much HBO are spending on this episode, but the average episode of season 6 has been $10 million (£7m) and ‘Battle of the Bastards’ is believed to be the most expensive.
But, as cool as this is, the only real number that matters is how many men survive the Battle of the Bastards – and, more importantly, whether they’re Starks or Boltons.
Here’s the teaser for those who just can’t wait for the new episode:
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.