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While we still don't have an exact premiere date — or even a premiere month — for House of the Dragon, George R.R. Martin has provided a welcome update for the highly anticipated Game of Thrones spin-off series.

"Exciting news out of London — I am informed that shooting has WRAPPED for the first season of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON," the author of A Song of Ice & Fire announced on his Live Journal blog Thursday night. "Yes, all 10 episodes."

Martin also divulged that he's seen "rough cuts" of a few episodes. "And I'm loving them," he added. "Of course, a lot more work needs to be done. Special effects, color timing, score, all the post-production work. But the writing, the directing, the acting all look terrific. I hope you will like them as much as I do."

House of the Dragon, which takes place hundreds of years before the events of HBO's Game of Thrones during the height of the Targaryen empire, is set to premiere this year. But Martin still doesn't know precisely when.

"I wish I could tell you. Lots of work remains to be done, as I said, and COVID makes planning difficult," he wrote. "This spring? Unlikely. Maybe summer? Could be. Fall? Who knows? You'll know when we do."

When HBO and HBO Max chief content officer Casey Bloys spoke to various trade publications this week, he was hesitant to make a definitive statement on the House of the Dragon premiere date.

"One of the reasons why we're trying to be cautious about it is when you're shooting a show that big during a pandemic, especially with the last round [with] a lot of crew and cast members… you didn't know who was going to drop out or if we're going to have to shut down, so we just didn't want to declare a date and then find ourselves shut down," Bloys told Deadline. "Now that we are out of production, I think that we will talk to their guys and figure out what we want to do in terms of announcing a date. But I was just trying to make sure that we didn't come out with a date that we couldn't meet for something that was out of our control."

Nevertheless, Bloys told Variety that a season 2 is already pretty likely. "If you're betting on whether we're going to do a second season, I think it's probably a pretty good bet," he said. "Generally speaking, we usually let something air and see how it does, but obviously, we'll make preparations ahead of time to make sure we're ahead of the game."

House of the Dragon adapts events chronicled in Martin's Fire & Blood, which tracked the history of House Targaryen's rule. Specifically, the show will focus on events leading up to and surrounding the Dance of the Dragons, which is the name the poets of Westeros gave to the bloody civil war that broke out among the Targaryens over succession of the Iron Throne.

Emma D'Arcy stars as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, a key figure in the events that will unfold in House of the Dragon. Paddy Considine plays Rhaenyra's father, King Viserys; Matt Smith plays her uncle, Prince Daemon; Olivia Cooke plays Alicent Hightower, daughter to Hand of the King Sir Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans); and Steve Toussaint plays Corlys Velaryon, the famed nautical explorer known as the Sea Snake and the lord of House Velaryon.

Martin previously wrote about a rough cut of the pilot episode he saw. "It's dark, it's powerful, it's visceral," he said. "Just the way I like my epic fantasy."

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Related content:

• George R.R. Martin praises House of the Dragon pilot as 'dark,' 'powerful,' and 'visceral'
• House of the Dragon will have a 'different tone' from Game of Thrones
• House of the Dragon heats up with first teaser trailer for Game of Thrones prequel

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