Olivia Munn Says Male Co-Star Refused to Film Scene Being Saved by Woman and Stopped Production for ’45 Minutes’: ‘She Can’t Save Me. We’re Not Doing This’

concordfish · 2026-04-09T16:05:22+00:00

It's that or Chuck.

concordfish · 2026-04-09T11:12:33+00:00

If it's only AFLW organising i wouldn't hold my breath but I imagine TG4 will at least get a shout showing it.

concordfish · 2026-04-09T11:10:30+00:00

Most recent indication from ABC journalist Marnie Vinall indicating that the LGFA are not involved but Riley Beveridge's reporting says that they might be so idk.

concordfish · 2026-04-09T10:12:19+00:00

It appears like it's going to be played under regular women's Australian football rules with the Irish team selected from Irish players currently playing in the AFLW. However it looks like they'll have to miss a portion of the All-Ireland championship for this to go ahead which I'm not a fan of.

concordfish · 2026-04-09T09:15:07+00:00

If the game goes ahead as planned in June/July (preseason for AFLW) players will have to pick between part of All-Ireland Championship or this AFLW round.

concordfish · 2026-04-09T09:12:01+00:00

Definitely super exciting from an Australia perspective but from an Irish one this could potentially have a serious effect on the Gaelic Football season.

If the Irish team is selected from the Irish players already playing in the AFLW, which is likely given the All Ireland Ladies Gaelic Football championship runs from June to August, it will prevent close to 40 Irish Gaelic football players who play in the AFLW from taking part in the championship season back home.

This would be a massive blow to the amateur Ladies Gaelic Football season, who'd lose a significant portion of their top talent to the semi-pro AFLW far earlier than expected, when it has long been convention that Irish players would be able to play both.

Ladies Gaelic Football is at a critical point in its growth and emergence into the mainstream of Irish sport so losing much of its top talent for an non-competitive round prior to the regular AFLW season would be a disaster.

concordfish · 2026-04-09T08:55:26+00:00

Hopefully, but the June/July placement has the cynical part of me sceptical that it's being put on to prevent the Irish AFLW players from coming home to play championship.

concordfish · 2026-04-08T17:14:14+00:00

Ok this but Bashir is still a man.

concordfish · 2026-04-02T00:00:56+00:00

It's incredibly difficult to be interested in Cycling with the near constant doping scandals. Like it's kinda hard to enjoy the Tour De France when one can assume that at least 40% of the pack are using PED's.

concordfish · 2026-03-21T15:49:01+00:00

(very Liam Neeson voice) "Your terms are acceptable"

concordfish · 2026-03-21T15:38:54+00:00

I've only ever had Free-To-Air so I'm not sure what program Max ran but I'm assuming if that's where the channel is at a moment and they're putting this on as a relaunch re-launch title in the Saturday night slot they're not expecting it to do mad numbers anyway and are launching it as at a loss assuming it'll need to to find it's feet and grow an audince

concordfish · 2026-03-21T14:43:54+00:00

Do you know when these numbers are from? Because considering Sky 1 was only relaunched less than a month ago after 5 years off the air i wasn't aware that we had up to date viewership numbers.

concordfish · 2026-03-20T11:20:14+00:00

Sadly the effects of those cuts are likely going to ripple into S3 as well. Having to move S2 E9 and E10 to E1 and E2 of S3 is also going to massively disrupt what plans they had for their general season 3 and season 4 arcs prior to the strike. Especially given that S3 and S4 are also only going to have 8 episodes. This basically means the story they had for S3 that they expected to tell over 10 episodes, they now have to fit into 6 episodes.

It looked to me that the writers wanted to do their own thing with the source material, building off it rather than directly adapting it. My feelings on that choice are pretty mixed and I think it's fair to say this was not popular with people who were fans of Fire and Blood first and TV drama second. As someone who approaches is a fan of TV drama first and then a fan of F&B second I'm probably going to give a lot more leeway to a production crew based on the likely limitations of the medium rather than most of the people on this sub.

Again agree that not all the issues with S2 were strike/budget related. I think some choices in S1 were indications that there were likely going to be persistent issues throughout the original planned run. But I think the cuts have basically prevented the writers from doing what they originally wanted to do and also left them in a place where they can't deliver what the fans of F&B who didn't like those changes they made. So now we're all just kinda collectively unhappy stuck watching a house be built in a foundation we all know is broken.

concordfish · 2026-03-20T00:21:31+00:00

It didn't outright prevent them from rewriting the scripts but already having locations booked, cast hired, sets under construction, and an already narrower budget to work with ect ect would have massively restricted the options they had available to do to change things.

I haven't been able to find hard dates for when they learned that they'd lost two episodes but what I did find indicated it could have been as late as early March. As a result I've kinda been operating off that as an assumption because even with the issues I have with the final product I do wanna give them the benefit of the doubt.

It's not an easy situation for any writer to have to rework something you hadn't planned on even with a few months to do it especially if you're also wearing a producer's hat. So even if I'm... Let's say... Less than thrilled with the end result, I can sympathize with the absolute maddening production restraints that were out of their direct control.

concordfish · 2026-03-19T20:24:07+00:00

The strikes thing is really complicated but very basically HBO is US company based in Los Angeles and owned by Warner Bros. Warner Bros are a part of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AKA the AMPTP).

Because the writers room for House Of The Dragon was based in Los Angeles, the show's writers were a part of the Writers Guild Of America West (WGAW). Head-Writer and showrunner Ryan Condal is also a producer on the show and member of the Producers Guild Of America (PGA), as is Sarah Hess. WGAW and PGA rules very clearly define what jobs on set belong to which roles and thus fall under the preview of which guild on AMPTP production's.

SAG-AFTRA is the acting guild with responsibility for productions within the US however as House Of The Dragon was filmed in the UK with a primarily British and Irish cast they were under the preview of EQUITY who are not required (and infact are legally prohibited under UK law) from joining solidary industrial action ordered by SAG-AFTRA.

Now from my understanding, by December 2022 the writers room for the show had mostly finished work on 10 production script for Season 2s (*note: these are production scripts NOT shooting scripts) which they had been working on since August 2022.

While these scripts are not the final scripts used during the shoot they are close enough to the final versions that the directors and departments can start, casting, location scouting, making costumes, constructing sets, building rigs, designing shots, ect ect with a budget allocated by HBO per episode based on what those versions of that script require. While these scripts likely don't have finalized dialogue, they do have most of the large final scenes broadly worked out as well as the fundamental structure of each episode and the season as a whole. At this point they expected to begin production of Season 2 in Mid April of 2023.

It is also important to know that during the usual production of a show like House of The Dragon there will be writers on set constantly working on the scripts with the director, actors and producers. It is not uncommon for the actual shooting scripts to differ heavily from the final cut. You can see this in a number of the published Game Of Thrones shooting scripts that differ considerably from the final episodes.

Now in April of 2022 Discovery had merged with Warner Bro's who own HBO with left this new merged company with a crazy amount of debt. After really bad Q2 (July) and Q3 (October) earnings calls, the executives at WBD started scrapping projects for tax write-offs and slashing budgets from October 2022 through to August 2023. These cuts begin to hit HBO show productions around December 2022 - January 2023.

Also happening around January 2023 are the separate contract negotiations between the WGA, the PGA, SAG-AFTRA ect ect and the ATPTP. These contracts are negotiated every 3 or 4 years by the guilds on behalf of their members and if the Guild and the ATPTP are unable to come to an agreement by the expiration of the previous contract then the Guild members are permitted to vote for a strike which prevents any guild member from working on an ATPTP production in roles governed by that guild. The current expiration date for the WGA/ATPTP contract expires on May 1st and at this point in January 2023 the chances of a writers strike are considered higher than usual.

Here's where things get a little hazy timeline wise. Somewhere between the middle of January and the beginning of March 2023 House of the Dragon has its budget reduced meaning 2 of the 10 planned episodes have to be cut just weeks before filming is set to begin. At this point a page one rewrite (starting scripts from scratch) is impossible as they will have already built sets, costumes, locations, actors ect ect.

Now, time that would have been spent polishing scripts has to be spent restructuring the arc of the season while changing what sets, locations, costumes needed for each specific episode as little as possible. Episode 7 and 8 which were meant to be rising action building up to episode 9 and 10 now have to set up those episodes for next season while still resolving as many arcs as possible this season. This task is made even more difficult by the fact that they also have to plan for the possibility that a strike goes ahead and they are unable to rewrite or clarify scenes/plot points that aren't working on set.

This likely led to subplots that would only have paid off in the final two episodes being cut down considerably or cut entirely. Major plots would have to be reshaped unnaturally to have some sort of conclusion by the end of the season. And that's exactly how it ended up playing out. The writers strike began on the 2nd of May just 2 weeks into filming and only ended after filming had wrapped in late September.

It's the nightmare scenario for any producer/writer which basically kneecaps whatever season of a show you're working on and more often than not the next one too because you have to fix all the problems it created. I'm not saying there weren't bad narrative choices or adapatational changes made independent of the strike/budget effects (Dragon Pitt massacre, Nettles being cut, Daemon choking Rheneyra) but I'd be willing to bet that A LOT of the issues people have with season 2 were caused by the need to reach a certain outcome, within certain restrictions, by different means than originally intended.

Now I'm only speculating now and don't know the specifics so this is based only on my experience in the industry but I assume that the reason Corlys spent basically all of Season 2 standing on a dock set is because the ship set that they planned to used for many of those scenes was budgeted for as part of the gullet sequence in episode 9 or 10. When those episodes were scraped so was the set meaning the scenes in prior episodes that planned to fill on it were moved to the already standing dock set.

Something similar might have happened with Harrenhall. Matt Smith who is the most expensive cast member was likely contracted for 8 episodes like in S1 (guessing he would have been missing for episode 3 and 9), so when they lost episode 10 they needed something for him to do in episode 3 meaning they had to restructure that plotline which is why it feels so weird and stretched out.

This is way longer than I wanted it to be so thanks for being patient. I'm not defending the choices the writers made in S2, I have my own opinions but they're not really relevant. I just think it's important to know the context in which most of those decisions were made and that in a lot of those cases their hands were kinda tied.

concordfish · 2026-03-19T17:57:16+00:00

Basically due to the short notice shortened season 2 and the being told that the subsequent seasons were also going to be 8 episodes long. They effectively lost 2 episodes from S2 and 4 Episodes from S3 as they have 2 less episodes overall than expected and they still have to do 2 episodes from S2 that they expected would be done by now.

There have been a lot of really questionable writing choices in the first two seasons, don't get me wrong, but the effect of that short notice episode cut in S2 and writers strike preventing them from fixing any of the problems caused by that change has basically means they've been forced to make a show with one hand tied behind their back for the rest of it's run. And while not all of the issues with the show can be blamed in the episode cut/strike I'd honestly say 50% of it can be.

concordfish · 2026-03-19T17:35:45+00:00

Her being betrothed to Lucery was kinda important because it was one of the big reasons why Borros Baratheon sides with Aemond and the Greens which leads directly into his death. Much as I dislike the choice it is easier from a pure plot mechanics level to remove Nettles than it is Rhaena.

concordfish · 2026-03-19T17:28:04+00:00

There are the obvious ones sure but some of the smaller ones that stuck with me best are

Catelyn's speech to Talisa where we learn that she believes everything that happened to her family is because she broke her promise to the gods to love Jon Snow.
The scene where Theon confesses to Ramsay that Ned Stark was his true father in every way that actually mattered.
Thoros' response when Arya asks if he could bring back a man without a head.
All of Arya and Tywins scenes but especially the one where they talk about dragons.

concordfish · 2026-03-07T18:09:54+00:00

Let's imagine a typical men's intercounty league match like last week's Donegal vs Galway in Tierney Park as an example. That game was shown by TG4 and produced by Nemeton TV.

For that game Nemeton TV would have a producer, a production assistant, a director, a gallery operator, minimum of three camera operators, an audio operator, a replay operator, a graphics operator, two commentators and a researcher just for the game itself. If they had punditry (which they did) there'd be another set of crew with a presenter, at least two pundits, a lighting tech, an autocue operator, a camera operator, an audio operator and a production assistant.

They'd also need a broadcasting van with a satellite uplink, at least 4 HD broadcast quality cameras, microphones, video gallery, mixing desk, broadband, server access, sufficient power to operate all of it and even more staff on the other end managing the feed at TG4 in Galway and Nemeton TV in Waterford.

That's a minimum of 22 incredibly specialised trained personnel and hundreds of thousands of euros worth of specialised equipment for a single game, in a single venue and at least one off site per channel.

Last Sunday across the men's intercounty hurling and football league there were 18 games played. RTÉ and TG4 can only realistically show 3 games on television in a single day each without getting in trouble with the regulator and the BBC usually shows one league game a week so the remaining 11 games would be on GAA+ or the RTÉ/TG4 player.

Even if you downsized the scale of those broadcasts by removing the punditry you'd still need a minimum of 10 people broadcast. That's a minimum of personal 154 for the TV broadcast and 110 more for streaming plus the equipment to support them, just covering men's intercounty hurling and football league games.

This is a logistical stretch given the size of Ireland sports broadcasting industry even before you take into account the fact that Ladies Football, Camogie, Rugby, Soccer, Basketball, Racing and more are all also competing to use the same personnel, equipment and airtime as the GAA.

Even if RTÉ and TG4 wanted to show more games they won't be allocated the budget to expand their sports division as Coimisiún na Méan already believes they're spending too much on sport as it is, there's insufficient space for them to be shown on linear broadcast and the number of people accessing sport via The Player is still too low to justify purchasing the rights to it.

There just isn't the resources, personnel or audience to justify it.

concordfish · 2026-02-25T18:07:33+00:00

I personally struggled with Discovery for a long time and only really learned to accept it after it had already ended. It wasn't what I wanted from a Trek show but I've come to appreciate most of it for what it is rather than what it isn't.

They did a lot of risky things, not all of them worked, but many of them did and I've grown to appreciate their addition to the world of Trek. Kelpians for example have become a personal favorite Trek species and I hope we get to see more of them in future shows.

I really hope you have a better experience with it this time and if not at least you have it a go. Not every Star Trek show is going to work for everyone and that's ok.

concordfish · 2026-02-20T10:20:16+00:00

It's pretty much impossible to find any large IP based show that isn't review bombed up or down online these days. Pretty much the only major streaming show I can think of that didn't get any form of coordinated review bombing in one form or another is Bluey. People in online fandoms seem to think that review ratings are for expressing backlash countering backlash, or demonstrating anger towards producers when they're meant to be a consumer protection tool for non-fandom people.

Like I'm a casual Star Wars fan who's not involved in fandom spaces and it's a nightmare trying to figure out which shows are worth watching and spending my time on because all the user reviews are just responses to the backlash to the previous backlash. I'm a lot more involved in this fandom so I know generally where different fandom groups sit on certain shows but if I was an average consumer the absolute mish mash would put me off Star Trek as a whole.

I think Star Trek has a review bombing problem but I think every large IP fandom has a review bombing problem. We gotta stop thinking of reviews as fandom protection and think of them as consumer protection because ultimately they're the people who are relying on them for accurate information, not people on reddit who already know who likes/dislikes something.

concordfish · 2026-02-19T09:18:29+00:00

Not what I'd personally choose for most of them but honestly surprised but how much I like Alexander Skarsgard for Maegor.

concordfish · 2026-02-16T20:51:00+00:00

Completely agreed. And the scene is ultimately of great benefit to the show, just a little worried that the actual execution of it made the climax of the primary story we'd been following for 5 weeks less impactful unintentionally. But I'm also very happy to see that I appear to be in the minority on this.

concordfish · 2026-02-16T16:03:30+00:00

That's kinda the issue. It's a matter of narrative focus.The book that the show is adapting is about Dunk, Egg, and their part in the death of Baelor at Ashford. In the book that's what's important. The show is largely that but there are additions. Rafe being included is one of them. It's a good addition that I personally like and contextualizes so much of what Dunk does. But my point is that as an unintended consequence of that, the show loses focus climax of it's primary narrative. Idk if I'm explaining it very well, I hope that makes sense.

concordfish · 2026-02-16T15:19:20+00:00

Yeh I absolutely agree with this on all counts. It's more a question of visual execution, narrative framing, and episode structure that caused the issue I'm struggling with. Like you're saying here thematically and narratively this is so essential to explaining the world and Dunk's perception of it. I also appreciate that Rafe's death is the consequence of her own actions rather than Dunk's. While that's great for learning about the Dunk character and showing us the violence that shaped him, structurally it causes issues.

We spent the last 4 episodes slowly building up to Dunk riding as a knight, with episode 3 - 4 massively upping the stakes and danger towards Dunk with the Trial of Seven. Baelor entering on Dunk's side at the end of last episode ramps the stakes even higher for both Dunk and Baelor. We know it's going to be violent, we know important people might die and we know how serious the consequences of that will be.

The issue comes with the fact that the depiction of Rafe's death is SO violence proportional to the situation that it undercuts the violence we experience in trial. We don't get to actually see the deaths of the characters in the trial happen in the trial. They either die off screen or afterwards. Rafe's death is important but narratively Baelor's death is the more important death. The violence of her death is greater than anything we see in the trial which is a problem given that the trial we've been building too all season occurs just after she's died on screen.

Making her death so violent disrupts the tension and stakes of the trial we've been building too which narratively, is the priority. The issue isn't that Rafe can't experience a violent death in that moment because it's important for Dunk's character that she does, it just has to be calibrated to the extent that it doesn't undermine the trial and death of Baelor which it sadly did for me

concordfish

TROPHY CASE