HBO confirms on working on four potential spinoffs of GOT

[Newstar]

1 hour ago, Byfort of Corfe said:

CGI alone isn't going to make people watch.  There will always be something better coming out.  GoT succeeded because it had a large core audience of book readers

No, the book reader audience is negligible compared to the show-only viewers, and the book readers wouldn't have kept the series from cancellation if the show-only viewers hadn't tuned in en masse. Many shows with small but diehard fandoms get cancelled, because the show never catches on for whatever reason with a wider audience. 

GOT didn't succeed because of the book readers. It succeeded in spite of them; a lot of the book readers have abandoned the show in recent seasons, but the show's success and popularity have only increased. In fact, I'm sure if some book readers had had their way, the show would have been cancelled when it started to diverge significantly from the books. However, the book readers bailing out of the show has had no effect on the success of the show.

Quote

 and because GoT had characters that people cared about.

Again, that wouldn't have saved the show without the visual spectacle, shocking twists, etc. A lot of shows had characters that people cared about which have either teetered on the ratings edge for years before being euthanized or which were cancelled outright very quickly.

I'd also add that ASOIAF didn't reach a mass audience because people cared about the characters, since sword and sorcery fantasy is a popular genre with no shortage of options for readers, it was because the books brought gritty realism to the genre and took fantasy cliches and turned them inside out. It was fantasy for people who don't read fantasy. 

Mass success, not just piddling success with a small core of statistically negligible but diehard fans, depends on branding. ASOIAF has a brand: gritty anti-Disney fantasy with shocking twists, sex and violence. GOT has a brand, too: eyepopping visual spectacle, shocking twists, sex, violence, and not only zombies but also dragons. "Characters that people cared about" has nothing to do with the mass success of either GOT or ASOIAF. It's nice to have, of course, but it has nothing to do with becoming a phenomenon.

[Leonardo]

Wrong Byfort, I was hooked after the very first scene of the show(as well as most people Ive watched it with), had nothing to do with characters and everything to do with plot. Scary ice zombie demons? Count me in

[Dragonsbone]

1 hour ago, Leonardo said:

Wrong Byfort, I was hooked after the very first scene of the show(as well as most people Ive watched it with), had nothing to do with characters and everything to do with plot. Scary ice zombie demons? Count me in

There are thousands of articles who analyses what makes GoT so successful. And all of them come to the same conclusion: it is a combination of story, charcters and visuals. It has so much to offer, to a variety of viewers, from different ages and different sex. Nearly everyone finds something he loves, because it is not bounded to a specific genre. Not in the classical way. It has fantasy elements, classical drama elements, family dynasty elements, war elements, horror movie elements, gender equality elements, pornographic elements. It also has a vast variety of different kind of characters from different geographical places. And it is, compared to everything else seen on television, not predictable (for the main viewers, not book fans who can name all the Targaryen Kings while sleeping). Also people love the idea that everyone can die. Even main characters. That is something unique on television, because usually on other tv shows, when the main character dies, it means that the actor did not want to continue, and soon after the show gets cancelled due to low ratings. So there is not just one particular element to explain the success of GoT. It is the combination. 

And now ask yourself: will the upcoming spinn-off be able to offer this amount to the avarage viewer?

[El Guapo]

32 minutes ago, Dragonsbone said:

. 

And now ask yourself: will the upcoming spinn-off be able to offer this amount to the avarage viewer?

Sure. Why wouldn't it?

[A Bong of Ice and Fire]

52 minutes ago, Dragonsbone said:

There are thousands of articles who analyses what makes GoT so successful. And all of them come to the same conclusion: it is a combination of story, charcters and visuals. It has so much to offer, to a variety of viewers, from different ages and different sex. Nearly everyone finds something he loves, because it is not bounded to a specific genre. Not in the classical way. It has fantasy elements, classical drama elements, family dynasty elements, war elements, horror movie elements, gender equality elements, pornographic elements. It also has a vast variety of different kind of characters from different geographical places. And it is, compared to everything else seen on television, not predictable (for the main viewers, not book fans who can name all the Targaryen Kings while sleeping). Also people love the idea that everyone can die. Even main characters. That is something unique on television, because usually on other tv shows, when the main character dies, it means that the actor did not want to continue, and soon after the show gets cancelled due to low ratings. So there is not just one particular element to explain the success of GoT. It is the combination. 

And now ask yourself: will the upcoming spinn-off be able to offer this amount to the avarage viewer?

 

19 minutes ago, El Guapo said:

Sure. Why wouldn't it?

Because it won't have GRRM's books to take its characters and story from?  I'm sure it will be well-produced and probably not bad, but will it be special like GoT?  We shall see, El Guapo.  Come the dawn of the new show, we shall see.

[Leonardo]

People keep claiming about characterization when its essentially a heavily edited short story without a lot of direct dialogue due to being a historical account supposedly from multiple people unlike the series...

 

I think it has plenty of potential. It wont garner GOT level notoriety at all, but it doesnt need to.

[dsug]

On 5/16/2017 at 10:04 AM, RhaenysB said:

 

That's really up to personal opinion and preference. Show me a fan who only watched the show who even knows what the dance of the dragons is. H

Well the same can be said about Dunk and Egg. At leas the Dance has been name dropped enough to at least have some evidence. Aemon mentioned Egg on his deathbed, but outside of that, I don't remember Duncan or Aegon even being named in the series. 

[Rhodan]

22 minutes ago, dsug said:

Well the same can be said about Dunk and Egg. At leas the Dance has been name dropped enough to at least have some evidence. Aemon mentioned Egg on his deathbed, but outside of that, I don't remember Duncan or Aegon even being named in the series. 

Actually, Duncan has been dropped twice. First by Old Nan in season 1 and then by Joffrey in 4. But obviously, that wasn´t still enough to give anything about the context.  

[RhaenysBee]

1 hour ago, dsug said:

Well the same can be said about Dunk and Egg. At leas the Dance has been name dropped enough to at least have some evidence. Aemon mentioned Egg on his deathbed, but outside of that, I don't remember Duncan or Aegon even being named in the series. 

Absolutely, it's up to everybody's personal preference and opinion what they think would work as a spinoff. As far as I'm concerned, RR is the only story that has a potential of making it into a moderately okay spinoff. Of course if they unleash a shit storm of flashbacks in the upcoming two seasons, this won't be true anymore (but then I doubt that's going to happen), otherwise it'd hardly be a tale told twice. 

[The Dragon has three heads]

Very glad RR is not to be done.  As GRRM said himself by the end of asoif everything you'd need to know about it will have been told.   That's kind of important in and of itself for book readers.

And glad he left dunk and egg off the table, for obvious reasons.

Whatever script happens I know I'll watch it if it has GRRMs blessing.  But I won't neccesdarily like it.  Morbid fascination and peer pressure will force me to watch season 7.  Hopefully they can pull of something with the ending that works.  Hopefully.

[RhaenysBee]

1 hour ago, The Dragon has three heads said:

Very glad RR is not to be done.  As GRRM said himself by the end of asoif everything you'd need to know about it will have been told.   That's kind of important in and of itself for book readers.

So that basically means that I'm expected to wait for GRRM to finish asoiaf if I want to know what happened during Robert's Rebellion. In other words, I will never know. Okay, RR won't be made into a spinoff but I certainly hope season 7 and 8 will cover what There is to know about RR otherwise that chunk of backplot will be forever lost. 

[dsug]

2 hours ago, RhaenysB said:

So that basically means that I'm expected to wait for GRRM to finish asoiaf if I want to know what happened during Robert's Rebellion. In other words, I will never know. Okay, RR won't be made into a spinoff but I certainly hope season 7 and 8 will cover what There is to know about RR otherwise that chunk of backplot will be forever lost. 

Not spoiling anything, but if leaks are to be believed, I think you will get some answers. 

 

I think the Dance or the Conquest would be easy to sell. "Before the Mother of Dragons sailed to Westeros, her ancestors conquerored it. Watch as a family of ancient Targaryens and their dragons united the seven squabbling kingdoms with fire and blood." Boom. If I read that, I'd be sold haha. Same with the Dance. "Before the Targaryen dynasty was defeated, they were strong. But in a time when a Queen and a King both vied for the Iron Throne, Westeros was dragged into a war of fire and blood." Idk something like that.

HBO will find a way to pitch it. They got people to watch one show about ice zombies and dragons and warfare, they'll get us to watch another one. Especially if it's directly related to GoT. In my opinion, anyway. 

[Dragonsbone]

3 hours ago, The Dragon has three heads said:

Very glad RR is not to be done.  As GRRM said himself by the end of asoif everything you'd need to know about it will have been told.   That's kind of important in and of itself for book readers.

And glad he left dunk and egg off the table, for obvious reasons.

Whatever script happens I know I'll watch it if it has GRRMs blessing.  But I won't neccesdarily like it.  Morbid fascination and peer pressure will force me to watch season 7.  Hopefully they can pull of something with the ending that works.  Hopefully.

Except that nobody will ever see such a thing as an ending of ASOIAF. 

Evereything you want to know about the continuation of the story, you will need to see it on television. If HBO does not go that way, you will never know. 

[SuperMario]

5 hours ago, RhaenysB said:

So that basically means that I'm expected to wait for GRRM to finish asoiaf if I want to know what happened during Robert's Rebellion. In other words, I will never know. Okay, RR won't be made into a spinoff but I certainly hope season 7 and 8 will cover what There is to know about RR otherwise that chunk of backplot will be forever lost. 

Yep. The only things we'll ever know about RR will come in whatever visions they show us from TV show Bran. We'll get the bare bones stuff about R+L=J and the reality behind the ToJ and RR, but not much of anything specific beyond that. GRRM may show us some in TWOW, but since that will be the last book that gets released, we won't know anything more beyond that.

[Byfort of Corfe]

On Invalid Date at 0:11 PM, Newstar said:

No, the book reader audience is negligible compared to the show-only viewers, and the book readers wouldn't have kept the series from cancellation if the show-only viewers hadn't tuned in en masse. Many shows with small but diehard fandoms get cancelled, because the show never catches on for whatever reason with a wider audience. 

GOT didn't succeed because of the book readers. It succeeded in spite of them; a lot of the book readers have abandoned the show in recent seasons, but the show's success and popularity have only increased. In fact, I'm sure if some book readers had had their way, the show would have been cancelled when it started to diverge significantly from the books. However, the book readers bailing out of the show has had no effect on the success of the show.

 

I'd also add that ASOIAF didn't reach a mass audience because people cared about the characters, since sword and sorcery fantasy is a popular genre with no shortage of options for readers, it was because the books brought gritty realism to the genre and took fantasy cliches and turned them inside out. It was fantasy for people who don't read fantasy. 

No but you have to admit that making a series from a best selling book or books is certainly easier than making one from a completely unkown commodity.  And that divergence of the series from the books didn't happen (with minor differences, compositing characters, etc) until the series was well established.  As for the "gritty realism" that came about because of the characters.  If all that people cared about was CGI and the whiz bang effect "King Arthur Legend of the Sword" would have been a big hit.

 

22 hours ago, Dragonsbone said:

There are thousands of articles who analyses what makes GoT so successful. And all of them come to the same conclusion: it is a combination of story, charcters and visuals. It has so much to offer, to a variety of viewers, from different ages and different sex. Nearly everyone finds something he loves, because it is not bounded to a specific genre. Not in the classical way. It has fantasy elements, classical drama elements, family dynasty elements, war elements, horror movie elements, gender equality elements, pornographic elements. It also has a vast variety of different kind of characters from different geographical places. And it is, compared to everything else seen on television, not predictable (for the main viewers, not book fans who can name all the Targaryen Kings while sleeping). Also people love the idea that everyone can die. Even main characters. That is something unique on television, because usually on other tv shows, when the main character dies, it means that the actor did not want to continue, and soon after the show gets cancelled due to low ratings. So there is not just one particular element to explain the success of GoT. It is the combination. 

And now ask yourself: will the upcoming spinn-off be able to offer this amount to the avarage viewer?

Which is true, GoT was lightning in a bottle and now they are trying to do it again.  It will be very difficult to do, with a whole new cast and a whole new story.  Too many folks think it's simple, "oh, we have this formula, we have nudity and swords and dragons, how can it lose?".  I'm old enough to remember when "Excalibur" came out.  Immediately we were inundated with sword and shield and sword and sandal movies.  How many of them succeeded?  Almost none.  But there was a formula.  You have "Band of Brothers" on HBO, a big hit, take the same great production people and make "The Pacific", respectable but nowhere near as big a hit.  "Gladiator" is a big hit, let's make "Pompeii".

Now as for me it took a while for GoT and ASOIAF to earn me as a fan.  With a story that is basically disassociated from the current GoT they will have to earn me again.  Sometimes it works.  "Fargo" manages to do it withcompletely new casts and storylines every season but having said that it fails much more foten than it works.  And yes, I doubt that we will ever know what exactly happened in phases of Robert's Rebellion.  So I'll live without knowing that.  I have more important things to worry about.

[the tower of albion]

The Great Bastards is my bet for at least one of the shows. The story of Bittersteel, Daemon, Bloodraven and Shiera has all the ingredients for a HBO show and Bloodraven would tie it into the narrative of Game of Thrones

[Byfort of Corfe]

On Invalid Date at 7:03 AM, the tower of albion said:

The Great Bastards is my bet for at least one of the shows. The story of Bittersteel, Daemon, Bloodraven and Shiera has all the ingredients for a HBO show and Bloodraven would tie it into the narrative of Game of Thrones

But do most show fans really have any idea who these people actually are?  I still think that GRRM is sick and tired of ASOIAF and Dany and Sansa and Jon and LF and all the rest.  He wants to, IMO, get as far away from them as possible.  It's why I think we will never see book 7.  And I'm okay with that.

[The Dragon has three heads]

1 hour ago, Byfort of Corfe said:

But do most show fans really have any idea who these people actually are?  I still think that GRRM is sick and tired of ASOIAF and Dany and Sansa and Jon and LF and all the rest.  He wants to, IMO, get as far away from them as possible.  It's why I think we will never see book 7.  And I'm okay with that.

Despite him asserting to the contrary many, many times?

He would be sick of not being finished, yes, but that's art. It takes as long as it takes.  He would be sick of the shows overwhelming divergence and spoiling of his ending.  He would be sick of being hassled about winds.  He would be sick of being told he'll never finish.

For me I'll just be happy if winds makes it out, anything after that is a bonus.

[Lord Friendzone]

On 18. 5. 2017 at 7:16 AM, dsug said:

Well the same can be said about Dunk and Egg. At leas the Dance has been name dropped enough to at least have some evidence. Aemon mentioned Egg on his deathbed, but outside of that, I don't remember Duncan or Aegon even being named in the series. 

Aegon was mentioned along with Rhaenys and will be probably in the future.

 

[LordImp]

What I want most of all is a Age of heroes series.  

It could include the Bran the builder , Garth Greenhand , Grey king, COTF , merlings and Boltons flaying Starks and using their skins as cloaks .