EW Reveals 7 Season Plan

[Rooseman]

I'm torn about the 7 season plan.

So well, the show will certainly overpass the books. I think that was clear even when we assumed, that they weren't going to pack Feast and Dance into a single season.

On one hand, we saw how difficult it was to pack a book like A Storm of Swords even into two seasons. One season seems impossible, they would have had to strip lots of storylines from the book in order to fit a trimmed down version into 10 hours. Could you really imagine this containing a fraction of the experience that came from reading the book?

So, taking into account that they're not cramming even more book material into single seasons, there'll have to be drastic changes and trimmings. That's how it will have to be. It's a little sad that we will now never have a filmed version of ASoIaF that really does justice to the books. This is it.

On the other hand, we already saw that they were preparing lots of other storylines to go into a very different direction than the books. I think we can watch the 7th season and still have tons and tons of stuff to look forward to in the actual books. They'll finish the trimmed down show version of the story, so what? If they're already taking so many liberties with the storyline, I don't find it hard to imagine that the show ending will have lots of differences to the book ending. Especially if the book ending isn't even finished yet.

[Aegon Spengler]

I read the first book after watching the first season, and knowing Ned was going to die didn't "ruin" anything for me when I read it. In fact, it made me pick up on all the foreshadowing, which in turn led me to search for more "clues" that I probably wouldn't have picked up on otherwise. As long as the books maintain their quality (and I think ADWD, though probably in need of some editing, is beautifully written) knowing what's coming won't hurt my reading experience at all. Take your time George!

[franko99]

In all this... I have never figured out what the heck SPRING is supposed to be about?!

As hinted at by George (and I still wonder about it) the elephant in the room is The OTHERS (the Great Other and it's minions?).

Best I can puzzle out is a big 'Mordor'-like invasion of Westeros by the Others, bringing the Big Winter with it.

Trumps all the soap opera at KL, whatever the hell Jamie's story is , well just about everything going on in Westeros right now.

In Essos , somehow we move on with Arya's story and she leaves Braavos , my guess to Slaver's Bay and not Westeros yet.

Three interesting things going on, the BW - Wilding army + Stannis fighting a holding action against the Other's army.

In the East, a big honking battle to break the siege of Meereen , involving (somehow) Danny, Victarion's fleet and Selmy and the Unsullied army in Meereen.

Tryion in the mix , somehow.

That all gets settled ... whew!

Then does the big Ragnarök between the allied forces of Westeros and Essos against The Others happen in Winds?

The Others are defeated or driven back behind the Wall, if not , shaggy dog story!

That at the end of Winds or the start of Spring?

Spring seems an anticlimax, if no Ragnarök , who the wants to see more Machiavellian noodling around for the IT in Westeros, I am already tired of it!

Will Spring be about 100 pages long?

Two things to say:

1 - I don't think there will be an allied force of Westeros and Essos vs the Others. This isn't the LOTR, there's a big change the North will deal with the Others and the South with the Dragons, and those stories never meet eachoter (in fact I believe the South will never learn the truth about the Others)

2 - There's a lot of people who enjoy the political part of the story more than the magical one, I know this is fantasy but look around this forum and you'll see the "game of thrones" is as popular (or even more) than the dragons, prophecies and the Others

ETA: as for the last part, there is a reason the book will be called "a dream of srping", the story may end in the middle of winter you know :dunno: (or at least have most of the story in winter only to end with the coming of spring, nothing more)

[franko99]

I don't really get the push for GRRM to write more scripts in the final season, or even all of them as some have been suggesting. If he's stuck with the plots/pacing/storylines that D&D require of him to accomplish what they want plotwise, then there's only so much he can do. 3x07, GRRM's episode from Season 3, was, in my opinion, one of the weakest of Season 3; we can blame that on GRRM for not delivering, or we can blame that on D&D for giving GRRM a bunch of dumb scenes to write, but either way, the fact that GRRM was writing it did not magically transform it into amazing television, or even something noticeably better than what D&D and Bryan Cogman have been writing.

...I'm all for Bryan Cogman writing more scripts, though. He's writing two in Season 4. Maybe that number will be upped in Season 5? One can only hope.

I tend to agree. As another poster said, they'd been bandying about the 80 hour/8 seasons number in several interviews for a while now, and now they tell us that seven seasons was always the plan?

...If the ratings start flagging, and there's a good chance they will once we hit AFFC/ADWD territory, then I think the show will be lucky to make it to seven seasons. Eight is a pipe dream, I think.

Yes, but some of the worst scenes from that episode weren't written by GRRM, he said so in the comments, also that episode seems to have sufered a lot from swaping scenes with 3x08

[boojam]

What chance is there that the ratings start flagging at this point, though? We're about to enter what will almost certainly be regarded as the best season of the show thus far. The hype after this season will be tremendous. That means that season six will get renewed for sure after the first episode or two of season five, regardless of any perceived decline in quality during the fifth season. Even if the fifth season is weaker than the previous four, do you honestly expect a substantial audience drop off? I sure don't, and for all we know season five will actually be well-perceived.

Regardless, this show is a lock at this point for seven seasons at minimum. The audience drop off would have to be ridiculous for the show to not get renewed for a seventh season early into the sixth.

If the rumors are true HBO eventually kicked itself for killing ROME.

Apparently DVD sales caught them by surprise... I don't know how many have a provider that has 'premium' so one can watch again or catch up with word of mouth... I know I watched both HBO premium and got the DVDs.

Still ... this is an 'adventure' show , in media mogul eyes , they want to see the-sequel-tops-original deal , tho that usually does not work out, lot a bad sequels to films.

In this case can season 4 top season 3, 5 top season 4, and 6 top 5?

I don't know if we are on that kind of road for this show are not.

[Grey Guardian]

So, taking into account that they're not cramming even more book material into single seasons, there'll have to be drastic changes and trimmings. That's how it will have to be. It's a little sad that we will now never have a filmed version of ASoIaF that really does justice to the books. This is it.

We always knew this was going to happen once we reached AFFC/ADWD territory though. There really is too much going on at the same time to be placed in a single season, and I don't think it would be easy to understand everything unless you already knew what was going on. Maybe if they extended episodes to 90mins it would work for fitting enough storylines into each episode, but that would never end up happening. It is sad that we probably won't get a proper adaptation of the full story, but I'm glad we managed to get one at all, and it's a very good one in my opinion, bumps and all.

But we still don't know for certain, we may end up being surprised and find the plotlines for Quentyn, Aegon, Dorne, The Iron Islands, and Jeyne Poole still intact in Season 5. :dunno: But I doubt it.

[Hath4]

We always knew this was going to happen once we reached AFFC/ADWD territory though. There really is too much going on at the same time to be placed in a single season, and I don't think it would be easy to understand everything unless you already knew what was going on. Maybe if they extended episodes to 90mins it would work for fitting enough storylines into each episode, but that would never end up happening. It is sad that we probably won't get a proper adaptation of the full story, but I'm glad we managed to get one at all, and it's a very good one in my opinion, bumps and all.

But we still don't know for certain, we may end up being surprised and find the plotlines for Quentyn, Aegon, Dorne, The Iron Islands, and Jeyne Poole still intact in Season 5. :dunno: But I doubt it.

I think we will get a variation of those storylines you mentioned. Quentyn will loose his travelogue, he would appear at the begging of the season we see doran sending him to court danny, then he arrives near the end of the season and his story plays out. Aegon appears in maybe two epiosdes with tyrion, then we see him at the end of the season when he lands in westerous. dorne will probably be in maybe 5 epiosdes and we develop Arianne and Doran and reduce the sand snakes. the farya will probably play out similar to the books even if its not jeyne poole, random girl forced to marry ramsay. he abuses her, reek helps her escape and theon is reborn. there are two plausible options I see for the iron islands. One is we have a scaled down kingsmoot between vic and euron, he wins and sends vic to court danny. or we here about the two during season 5 and they are introduced in season 6 with vic in meereen and euron in the reach.

[Night's_King]

"Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him [Martin] and just talk through where things are going, because we don't know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character." Martin tells Windolf, "I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren't there yet. I'm hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me."

I guess I'll stop watching.

[briantw]

I guess I'll stop watching.

Hope you're also willing to stay off the internet for the years until Martin finishes the books, because there's no way you'd be able to avoid spoilers.

[Night's_King]

Hope you're also willing to stay off the internet for the years until Martin finishes the books, because there's no way you'd be able to avoid spoilers.

That's quite a problem.

[briantw]

That's quite a problem.

That's why I'm just going to go ahead and enjoy the show and not worry about spoilers. I'd rather see it on the show than simply read about it online, even if neither is truly ideal.

[Newstar]

I don't think that's terribly likely. Perceived declines in quality quite often don't affect ratings at all (Dexter sucked for about four seasons but kept getting more viewers). And condensing AFFC and ADWD into more or less one season will cure 90% of the problems people had with them.

I'd like to think so--and I agree that the TV adaptation is going to cure many of the problems with AFFC/ADWD due to time constraints--but so much has been made of GOT ratings climbing dramatically over past seasons, and I doubt that can continue indefinitely.

In this case can season 4 top season 3, 5 top season 4, and 6 top 5?

Well, we can't really vouch for the quality of post-ADWD books--there being none--but it looks like TWOW and ADOS are going to be pretty packed in terms of action and intrigue if the series is going to be wrapped up in two books, and we know that all the dominoes set up by GRRM in AFFC and ADWD are going to have to be knocked over at some point. There should be enough there to keep viewers interested, although again, I'm not sure if the show can sustain Season 3 levels of interest through the end of the series.

One potential positive aspect of seven seasons is that there will be no danger of a draggy pace. The show will be only picking up speed from here on in, rather than running out of steam as many long-running series do.

Hope you're also willing to stay off the internet for the years until Martin finishes the books, because there's no way you'd be able to avoid spoilers.

It seemed like the unsullied managed to stay pure for big developments in the show like the Red Wedding, despite Internet access, but it might get a bit muddled when the "unsullied" TV viewers know how the series progresses past ADWD and eventually ends while the book readers who've sworn off the show post-ADWD material to stay unspoiled do not. The fan forums would start looking pretty weird. I guess it's a "cross that bridge when you come to it"-type situation, but I dunno. Rather than banning book spoilers from TV forums, there might be a reciprocal ban of show spoilers from book forums. I don't know how well that would work in practice, though; some book readers are already parsing the TV show for clues as to future books.

[HairGrowsBack]

I read the first book after watching the first season, and knowing Ned was going to die didn't "ruin" anything for me when I read it. In fact, it made me pick up on all the foreshadowing, which in turn led me to search for more "clues" that I probably wouldn't have picked up on otherwise. As long as the books maintain their quality (and I think ADWD, though probably in need of some editing, is beautifully written) knowing what's coming won't hurt my reading experience at all. Take your time George!

This.

I saw the first three seasons before starting reading the books, and that didin't prevent me not only from enjoying them (that's an understatement). Sure we all want to be surprised, but there's much more to the books than the shock factor, and knowing what happens doesn't diminish how great they are.

[Mel_Rose]

That's why I'm just going to go ahead and enjoy the show and not worry about spoilers. I'd rather see it on the show than simply read about it online, even if neither is truly ideal.

yep, it's preferable to watch the show and find out what happens than come across a meme on facebook or spolier tweet and find out what happens that way.

Edit: clarity

[Khal-a-bunga]

Honestly, I do feel for those people who aren't going to continue watching the show once it eclipses the books, because it will be an incredibly difficult task to avoid spoilers.

Obviously I'm a huge fan of the show, but even I would prefer to read the ending first. I started with the books, and it was eight years later that the show first premiered. But ultimately, I'm ready for a conclusion. Even if it isn't exactly how things will go down in the last two books, I'm ready to see how this story - and the characters therein - get resolved. So I'll definitely continue to watch, and read the final book in the same way I would watch a director's cut of a favorite film. Not ideal, but I'd much rather experience the ending through the show than get accidentally spoiled on a message board.

[Colonel Green]

I'd like to think so--and I agree that the TV adaptation is going to cure many of the problems with AFFC/ADWD due to time constraints--but so much has been made of GOT ratings climbing dramatically over past seasons, and I doubt that can continue indefinitely.

While the climb can't continue (probably; The Big Bang Theory keeps getting bigger, I guess), that doesn't mean there'll be a dramatic falloff either.

It seemed like the unsullied managed to stay pure for big developments in the show like the Red Wedding, despite Internet access, but it might get a bit muddled when the "unsullied" TV viewers know how the series progresses past ADWD and eventually ends while the book readers who've sworn off the show post-ADWD material to stay unspoiled do not.

I think it's very different to avoid spoilers for a current TV show that is watched by millions and discussed on pretty much all major pop culture sites (and in real life), as opposed to avoiding spoilers on a series of books read by fewer people that have been released for many years, and thus discussion is concentrated in fan sites like this one.

[King Tommen]

I think the dynamic of watching the show after it passes the books will be amazing. It will completely shift the way I think about the episodes. Book readers subconsciously (or sometimes consciously) immediately compare what they see on the screen as they watch to what they know has occurred in the books. When that element is no longer available and what you are watching on the screen is completely brand new information, it will allow you to experience the show in a different way. I imagine it will be very freeing for some. It's exciting IMO and I don't think many fans have grasped at how cool this will actually be since there is a fixation on how this affects the book reading experience.

[Abaddon]

I think the dynamic of watching the show after it passes the books will be amazing. It will completely shift the way I think about the episodes. Book readers subconsciously (or sometimes consciously) immediately compare what they see on the screen as they watch to what they know has occurred in the books. When that element is no longer available and what you are watching on the screen is completely brand new information, it will allow you to experience the show in a different way. I imagine it will be very freeing for some. It's exciting IMO and I don't think many fans have grasped at how cool this will actually be since there is a fixation on how this affects the book reading experience.

Many of us on this site are fans of the books first and foremost. I've been registered here since 2005, I have been reading since 2000, and there are many others who have been readers for this long or longer. I love the show, but I love the books more. For me, this hasn't been a point of contention, as I am pretty comfortable at this point viewing them as separate things.

So while your point has merit, for many of us long-time readers, watching the show break new ground over the books is going to be a bittersweet moment.

[Lord Joker Of FunLand]

So, taking into account that they're not cramming even more book material into single seasons, there'll have to be drastic changes and trimmings. That's how it will have to be. It's a little sad that we will now never have a filmed version of ASoIaF that really does justice to the books. This is it.

Most books get a crappy movie version...i consider us lucky to have a tv series.

[TheWhiteRabbit]

I think the dynamic of watching the show after it passes the books will be amazing. It will completely shift the way I think about the episodes. Book readers subconsciously (or sometimes consciously) immediately compare what they see on the screen as they watch to what they know has occurred in the books. When that element is no longer available and what you are watching on the screen is completely brand new information, it will allow you to experience the show in a different way. I imagine it will be very freeing for some. It's exciting IMO and I don't think many fans have grasped at how cool this will actually be since there is a fixation on how this affects the book reading experience.

But will D&D be able to write amazing dialogue without the books as a crutch? Once the show eclipses the books that's when we'll know if D&D are really good writers.