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GRRM confirms: TWOW not done yet


Hagen of Tronje

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I absolutely am not arguing that 8 is being promised. I'm saying the notion is being entertained, but ultimately things like negotiations with actors and the level of popularity of the show and how likely S5 will build on that popularity will be the ultimate decides.

That's the season I'm most worried about to be honest. I hope the show has built up enough good will that the audience will still tune in to dany playing queen with daario, and tyrion musing several times an episode about where whores go. Brans storyline will be great, but he has three chapters o source material. If the show is canceled prematurely, it will be because of s5.

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HBO are hedging their bets in case they get to 2016/17 and discover they haven't got any other big hit shows to pick up the slack when GoT finishes. In fact, I wonder if the overwhelmingly rapturous response to True Detective has buoyed HBO up and given them some confidence that they can move on after GoT finishes.


Yes, I expect that the success of True Detective will bolster their confidence that life goes on after GOT, as True Detective and other HBO shows replace GOT as the show of the moment.



The Sopranos only lasted for six seasons, although the last season was longer and split in half to make two. The Sopranos budget was also easily less than half that of GoT per season at the start, and at the end was still lower (GoT's per-episode budget was $6.9 million in Season 2, likely $7 million in Season 3 and probably closer to $7.5 million this year). Screenrant is using out-of-date information from when the show started, since HBO have not officially confirmed a budget since Season 1. We know it's gotten bigger from other comments (Season 2 being 15% higher than Season 1, for example).


Agreed, and all indications are that costs will be even higher next season due to the expanded scope (as stated in a recent interview with a GOT director of photography).



I liked House of Cards, but I think it would take an extraordinary effort of will not to admit that Spacey's performance (sublime at its best) did not descend into pure camp on a fairly regular basis.


Well, sure, but it isn't intrinsically campy the way GOT is: House of Cards has a veneer of sophistication so that the campiness isn't readily apparent at first glance, unlike GOT, a series which must wear its campiness on its sleeve like all fantasy.



That won't work. AFFC/ADWD will likely have much larger plots and character arcs simply missing from them than previous books/seasons, and in other cases will be fairly concise in getting points across. Think of ACoK/Season 2, which have a really surprisingly few scenes of direct adaptation compared to 1 or 3 (or, from the look of it so far, 4), only even more ruthless.


Well put. The writers are going to be vicious when it comes to cutting out everything extraneous and streamlining the material.



HBO clearly want 7.


That's my sense, too.


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I think Werthead's got the wrong end of the stick of it, though: I think D&D were the ones feeling firm on 7 around September, and it's HBO's execs who have become more open to 8. Whether that's a relief to them or not, I can't say. Maybe as we come to the end of the season and we get some fresh interviews, someone will put it to them again and get them on record as to what the outlook looks like.

Well, what about the EW interview with James Hibberd that's just been posted today, are you going to take that as the blatant evidence that they keep giving us? Or give this one a spin as well?

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/04/04/game-of-thrones-showrunners-season-4/

The wait is almost over. With HBO’s Game of Thrones fourth season returning Sunday, Entertainment Weekly sat down with showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss in our annual pre-premiere spoiler-free chat.

So this interview was not only just posted, it was also very recently conducted. What do the producers say about the length of the series in this interview?

You’ve given the dragons their biggest growth spurt yet this season. What are they like this time?

Weiss: They’re entering their adolescence. They’re having minds and desires of their own and they’re staring to not be all that interested in what their mom has to say. And that’s difficult when your children weigh 1,500 pounds. They’re really pretty massive beasts.

Benioff: Think about the skull Arya hides in during season one — that’s supposed to be a full-sized dragon. And our dragons are still not even close to that. By the time we get to the end, season seven, that’s where they have to get to — assuming they survive

Completely unambiguous from Benioff, and if anyone knows right now how long it's going to be, it's the guy planning the series. And this is then backed up by the recent soundbite from Lombardo who said they will be sitting together to talk season 5 soon and that 7 is the plan.

Also, to emphasize the difficulties of the increasing budget, a quote from today's article

Did you go to HBO to get more money for the battle episode, like with Blackwater?

Benioff: Yeah. It’s not just for the battle. This is the most action and VFX across the board. We did need to get down on our hands and knees once again, but it wasn’t just for the battle episode. The last three episodes are massive. We needed help and luckily they were there to answer our calls.

It seems to me that everyone is happy to keep this to 7 seasons, and would in fact be more than pleased to even make it to 7, head of HBO programming Mike Lombardo included. He feels 7 seasons alone is greedy, which of course it is.

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I already responded on that interview earlier. I actually have no idea when that dates from, though -- right After Hibberd got the screeners in February? Maybe. This week? Probably not.

At the NYC premiere, they were asked about it again. It was a fine opportunity for Benioff to reiterate the firm seven seasons of the September interview. Instead, he repeated it was going to be at least seven.

Not exactly seven. Not planned to seven. At least seven.

Nice and easy.

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Well, what about the EW interview with James Hibberd that's just been posted today, are you going to take that as the blatant evidence that they keep giving us? Or give this one a spin as well?

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/04/04/game-of-thrones-showrunners-season-4/

So this interview was not only just posted, it was also very recently conducted. What do the producers say about the length of the series in this interview?

Completely unambiguous from Benioff, and if anyone knows right now how long it's going to be, it's the guy planning the series. And this is then backed up by the recent soundbite from Lombardo who said they will be sitting together to talk season 5 soon and that 7 is the plan.

Also, to emphasize the difficulties of the increasing budget, a quote from today's article

It seems to me that everyone is happy to keep this to 7 seasons, and would in fact be more than pleased to even make it to 7, head of HBO programming Mike Lombardo included. He feels 7 seasons alone is greedy, which of course it is.

I'll keep this short and simple. Things change.

George R.R. Martin originally thought he could fit his series into 3 books and now he's trying to do it in 7 with a very good chance of having to make an 8th. They might want to fit everything into 7 seasons, but will they be able to is the big thing.

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I already responded on that interview earlier. I actually have no idea when that dates from, though -- right After Hibberd got the screeners in February? Maybe. This week? Probably not.

What we do know is that it was only just posted and just conducted.

We also have Benioff saying once again with utter clarity: "By the time we get to the end, season seven, that’s where they have to get to ".

I'm just glad that this has been put to rest by the producers and that we now know for certain that it will be seven seasons.

Even if you were right about the earlier Hibberd article having been conducted in September in Croatia, this quote then proves that they have not changed their narrative one bit since then. Which is heartening.

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I'll keep this short and simple. Things change.

George R.R. Martin originally thought he could fit his series into 3 books and now he's trying to do it in 7 with a very good chance of having to make an 8th. They might want to fit everything into 7 seasons, but will they be able to is the big thing.

This is a poor analogy. The reasons the series "couldn't fit" GRRM's 3 book plan is that (A) his writing tends to expand to fill any available space and (B ) there are few, if any, constraints to that available space. At the very least, (B ) is not the case for the HBO show. It's going to run for 7 (or, much less likely, 8) seasons, full stop. The producers will shoehorn the narrative material into whatever time frame is available. It remains to be seen whether they'll do a good job (I'm fairly optimistic).

Re: the 7 or 8 seasons, we can carry out exegesis of the interviews as long as we want*, but it practical logistics (which have been mentioned numerous times on this thread) make the former much much more likely:

1) Given actor contract renegotiations (which, if I understand Werthead correctly, can't even take place until after the 7th season!), there could be a massive jump in costs for the 8th season.

2) Not clear whether, even if HBO was willing to go along with such an increase, they could successfully lock up the actors for all the key characters that are still alive at that point.

3) You'd probably need to decide on 7 vs. 8 fairly early - certainly before plotting for the 7th season starts, and probably well before then. So this isn't something that can be decided "on the fly".

4) *Assuming the show is still fairly popular*, HBO would much much rather complete it than not (in fact, as other people have pointed out with other HBO series, even if popularity flags, they'd rather give it a conclusion than leave it open-ended). Given (1) (2) & (3), they'd be running a massive risk planning for 8 seasons.

QUESTION: What's the typical legal/contractual constraint on "extended final seasons"? Obviously HBO can't keep extending the last season in perpetuity in order to keep actors tethered.

*My sense is that an 8th season is not categorically ruled out, but also that Newstar's interpretation ("So you're saying there's a chance!") is the right one.

Anyway, looking forward to the series revealing the ending but I'll read the book-form novelizations/adaptation that GRRM or Brandon Sanderson eventually produce.

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There was a planned Tyrion chapter where he meets the Shrouded Lord. I expect he's referring to that. Apparently it was a really good, atmospheric chapter but he just couldn't fit it into the narrative

Do you have a link addressing this?

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Seems to me y'all are really over analyzing this 7 or 8 thing. We just don't know what's gonna happen

This depends though doesn't it? If you're the sort of person who values what the show's producers say, you'll come away from this knowing it will be 7 seasons, and that that is certainly the plan now, regardless of what may happen in the future.

If you're the sort of person who values what the HBO head of programming says, you'll come away with the same knowledge.

If you don't care about what the HBO executives and producers proclaim say about their own tv series, or if you desperately want to believe that there will be 8 seasons regardless of what HBO actually tells you, then you may come away from this thinking that it could actually be 8 seasons. There may be 10 other interviews in which the HBO producers say there will be 7 seasons, you still won't believe it until it is actually over and there are no more episodes.

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Do you have a link addressing this?

Here's the first one returned by a google search:

http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1663

Basically GRRM saying that he wrote a chapter where Tyrion meets the Shrouded Lord but it backed him into a corner in some other way so he had to cut it.

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I've only ever heard Benioff directly speak on the topic once. That was March 18th. At that time, he said "At least seven". ;)

I can't date any other statement that has been made with that level of accuracy. If someone can confirm the date of yesterday's published interview, that would be interesting.

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