Recently we had reported that HBO was thinking about filming in Sweden and also had zeroed down on the Gotland Island as a potential Game of Thrones filming location. They even got in touch with a Swedish production company to provide them photos of the location and it’s surroundings.
However, it appears that HBO has now decided against filming in Sweden as there are no tax breaks available.Olivia Munck of The Line Gotland, which is the production company which was in contact with HBO spoke with The Local. “It’s down to us not having any kind of tax reductions for filming in Sweden,” she said. However, it’s still possible that HBO might select Sweden in the future depending on how the situation regarding the tax breaks chages.
Hela Gotland spoke withMia Uddgren, who’s the film commissioner at Filmregion Stockholm-Mälardalen and they were told that HBO has decided to keep the photos of Gotland as they found it “incredibly interesting.” It now seems that Norway might benefit from this as the HBO production team has turned it’s sights to Norway, which is Kristofer Hivju AKA Tormund’s home country and it also has a system of tax breaks in place, which gives it an advantage over Sweden.
As of now there has been no information about any Norwegian locations being selected as potential filming locations. We will keep an eye on any potential news reports that surface in the coming days.
