HBO’s Game of Thrones is on hiatus for the next year or two, so if fans want to see any of its stars on-screen, they’ll have to follow them elsewhere to new films and projects. It can be fun to see familiar faces in entirely different contexts, and soon the Game of Thrones cast will be turning up everywhere from superhero blockbusters to quirky, foreign indie films.
Kit Harington (Jon Snow)
In the British historical television miniseries Gunpowder, set in the early 17th century, Harington trims down his beard to play Gunpowder Plot mastermind Robert Catesby. The series is currently airing on BBC One, and heads to HBO in December. He also stars in the Canadian satire The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, currently in post-production, playing the late American actor John Donovan.
Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen)
Clarke is taking a break from one big franchise by jumping into another. She stars as Kira in the spinoff film Solo: A Star Wars Story, currently scheduled for release on May 25th, 2018. Nothing has been confirmed about the character so far, but there are rumors circulating that Kira might be related to Daisy Ridley’s Rey in another tangential way: Kira was the name originally used for Rey during the development of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister)
Dinklage will play French actor and Fantasy Island star Hervé Villechaize in the biopic My Dinner with Hervé, which is currently shooting. Dinklage stars opposite fellow Game of Thrones co-star Oona Chaplin, who played the doomed Talisa Stark. He’s also getting into apocalyptic science fiction with I Think We’re Alone Now, a film about the destruction of humanity directed by The Handmaid’s Tale Emmy-winner Reed Morano. Dinklage also recently starred in Rememory, a sci-fi procedural mystery that hit video-on-demand in September, and has a minor part in Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. In that film, which is set for theatrical release on November 17th, he plays a sweet small-town local with a crush on Frances McDormand’s prickly protagonist.
Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister)
Headey plays Wendy, a tough immigration officer who must judge an asylum seeker’s fate, in The Flood, currently expected to arrive in theaters in 2018. Fellow Game of Thrones castmate Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont) plays her boss. Headey also stars in Fighting with My Family, a biopic about WWE wrestler Paige (the stage name of Saraya-Jade Bevis). That’s set to premiere sometime in 2019, with Headey as Julia Knight, the mom in a family obsessed with wrestling, opposite Dwayne Johnson as her husband.
John Bradley (Samwell Tarly)
Bradley plays confident band manager Ricky Rollins in American Satan, the story of a young rock band that makes a deal with the devil for fame. The film came out in mid-October. He’s also starring in the zombie movie Patient Zero, which features Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell) and Doctor Who’s Matt Smith.
Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark)
Continuing her streak of playing redhead badasses, Sophie Turner reprises her role as a young Jean Grey in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which is slated for release on November 2nd, 2018. Turner took the mantle from Famke Janssen starting with 2017’s X-Men: Apocalypse, and the telekinetic heroine has been played by a wide variety of actresses since the 1990s on television and in other media.
Maisie Williams (Arya Stark)
Turner’s co-star and on-screen sister is also getting involved in the X-Men franchise. She’s set to play Rahne Sinclair, aka Wolfsbane, in the Marvel film adaptation The New Mutants. Currently scheduled for release in April of 2018, the film will follow Sinclair and her fellow young mutants as they unleash their abilities while being held in a secret facility against their will. Williams also stars in two other films currently scheduled for 2018: Early Man, an animated stop-motion film about cavemen, and Departures, where she plays a terminally ill teenager who enlists a hypochondriac baggage handler to help her fulfill her bucket list.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister)
Besides his recent guest-star appearance on The Simpsons as a parody of his Game of Thrones character, Coster-Waldau has been filming alongside Game of Thrones co-star Carice van Houten (Melisandre) in the Scandinavian cop thriller Domino, directed by Brian De Palma. It’s set to premiere sometime in 2018.
Aiden Gillen (Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish)
Aiden Gillen has played a number of oddly-accented schemers who closely resemble Littlefinger over the past few years, most recently in 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. In January 2018, he’ll reprise his role as the villainous Janson in the Maze Runner finale, alongside Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei). He’s also scheduled to play James Joyce in a biopic called James and Lucia, which hasn’t started filming yet. And he’s lined up for the rock-infused Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, with Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek taking on the role of Freddie Mercury. Gillen plays Queen’s manager, and the film depicts the days leading up to the rock band’s most famous appearance in 1985. It’s planned for a Christmas 2018 release.
And more…
Gwendoline Christie, also known as Brienne of Tarth, will be back as Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The character was underwhelming in J.J. Abram’s The Force Awakens, but with Captain Phasma recently getting her own standalone novel, Christie will likely have a more significant role to play when the new film opens on December 15th. Sean Bean, who played Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, is also currently filming The Oath, a TV drama series produced by 50 Cent. Bean plays Tom Hammond, a cop and leader of a gang sworn to enforce the law.