James Norton Double Digest: Actor Boards 'House of the Dragon,' 'Wife & Dog'

James Norton's exit from Grantchester was messier than anyone would have liked. At the end of his three-season contract, he declined to re-sign for another season, delaying the show's fourth season by nearly a year as an agreement was worked out where he would be written out after the show's first two episodes. At the time, we compared it to the exit of Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey. (Though it was less violent, no one got so angry at him for refusing to come back for Season 4 that they had him die in a gruesome car crash.) However, at this point, Stevens was starring in Beauty & The Beast and Marvel's Legion, a level of success it seemed doubtful Norton could replicate, especially when his first two projects out of the box were Little Women and The Nevers. However, the return of Happy Valley for a third and final season and the upcoming series King & Conqueror have helped rectify that, and now he has two more high-profile projects on the books.

The first, announced on January 31, 2025, is that Norton is joining the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon. Though the prequel is not nearly as popular as the original series, its ratings are still, far and away, some of the highest for an HBO program. Moreover, Norton joins the series as Ormund Hightower, Lord of Old Town, the nephew of Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) and cousin of Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke), Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), and Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). This puts him squarely on the side of Team Green, and though he won't be riding dragons, he will be leading armies. 

Ormond also survives several battles where he is the head of the column, at least in the novels. Though the series has deviated from the books since Season 1, Norton will likely play a significant role in the show's third season and its planned fourth and final installment once it is formally greenlit.

All of five days later, Norton was announced as also signing on for a second project in case Ormund meets an earlier-than-expected demise, coincidentally starring alongside a former House of the Dragon alum who didn't make it to the end of the show's first season: Paddy Considine. The two are part of the additional lead cast joining Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Anthony Hopkins (One Life), and Rosamund Pike (The Wheel of Time) in Guy Richie's next feature film, Wife & Dog. The film still has no synopsis other than being somehow related to the 2019 film The Gentlemen and the hit Netflix series sequel of the same name. It is only currently described as "a return to the colorful, back-stabbing world of the British Aristocracy." One assumes from the wording that the film will have a few crossover characters to establish itself as part of the same cinematic universe but with little else in common.

Norton and Considine are two of the four high-profile British actors joining the movie. The other two are Shogun's breakout star Cosmo Jarvis, who fans may also remember from that terrible Netflix version of Persuasion, and the legendary Pip Torrens (Poldark). Ritchie wrote the screenplay, directs, and executive produces with longtime partner Ivan Atkinson, plus John Friedberg, Teddy Schwarzman, and Michael Heimler for Black Bear.

Both House of the Dragon Season 3 and Wife & Dog are expected to debut in 2026.