House of the Dragon showrunner compares Game of Thrones prequel to new movie Finch

Emma D'Arcy and Matt Smith in House of the Dragon — (Image credit: HBO)

Miguel Sapochnik's new apocalyptic sci-fi movie Finch is arriving on Apple TV Plus imminently, and beyond that, the director is also co-showrunning the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon.

Finch stars Tom Hanks as the titular character, who, in the aftermath of a devastating solar flare, builds a robot named Jeff (voiced by Caleb Landry Jones, who also provides the motion-capture performance) to take care of his dog Goodyear when Finch no longer can.

We sat down with Sapochnik to talk about the film – and found out how making Finch compares to the epic-in-the-making House of the Dragon.

"[They're] very, very, very different. As I said, Finch is two actors and a dog. House of the Dragon is lots of dragons and lots of actors. [Laughs] They're very different experiences," Sapochnik tells GamesRadar+.

"But the practice is the same if you're a director, which is I always ask myself in any project that I'm involved in, whose story is it? Whose point of view is it? What am I trying to say, and is that getting in the way of telling the story? So I approach things from the same perspective. I think that making Finch was a welcome respite from making Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. But it doesn't mean that I wasn't on set now and then, with an RV and a dog and a couple of actors, and I didn't wish that I had a dragon there too."

As for making a film with such a small cast, Sapochnik explains: "It was kind of wonderful, to be honest with you. You get to spend so much time with that person, whoever the actor is, you form a bond that you rarely get to do when your time is split amongst many other actors.

And actually, I think I would have found it quite difficult – if Tom Hanks was in House of the Dragon, I would have felt like I had been robbed of the opportunity to work with him, because there are so many other things you have to pay attention to. Whereas with Finch, I found it was truly just an incredibly gratifying experience to work with someone that there was so much to learn from, but was also so ready to collaborate."

Finch arrives to Apple TV Plus this November 5, while House of the Dragon is due to debut in 2022. You can check out our full interview with Sapochnik here for more on the movie.