Journalist James Andrew Miller is working on a book about HBO’s history and, in the process, spoke to author George R.R. Martin about Game of Thrones, and what do you know! There is even more to discuss about that terrible last season.
Among the over 700 interviews Miller conducted for the book were ones with Martin, Martin’s agent Paul Haas, and Richard Plepler, HBO’s former CEO. All gave some insights into the fantasy series that ended with a whimpering bang.
The author pushed for up to 10 seasons and 100 total episodes in order to fully get the story told, reports Insider.
“George would fly to New York to have lunch with Plepler, to beg him to do ten seasons of ten episodes because there was enough material for it and to tell him it would be a more satisfying and more entertaining experience,” Haas told Miller. However, as we already know, series creators and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were ready to move on from the series to a different project.
Haas added, “George loves Dan and Dave, but after season five, he did start to worry about the path they were going because George knows where the story goes. He started saying, ‘You’re not following my template.'”
That lack of a template left people feeling very unhappy about turns the series took, including Daenerys Targaryen turning into a bloody mindless tyrant. While the books have hinted at Dany’s darkness, and the show has highlighted her willingness to kill if needed, she wasn’t depicted as someone who would carelessly just burn down an entire city because of … bells.
Casey Bloys, the chief content officer at HBO who also spoke to Miller, says he understood that there would be pushback, but that the series made sense in the end.
“If there had been another episode or two, of course, that would have been helpful,” Bloys said. “I would have taken two more seasons! But I do believe if you look at the totality of her arc over the series, as opposed to the final episodes, her turn was more than earned, and was planned.”
Look, even as someone who thought Dany was a colonizer, I still don’t think it was well handled in the show. While a lot of us understood that as an underlying issue with Dany’s arc, the show certainly didn’t understand that at the best of times.
In speaking with Martin, the author said that the show has changed his life for the better, but he also wishes it had gone on longer, partly so that people would stop hounding him for his book.
“I wish it had run for ten years,” Martin said. “I think that would’ve given us a little more time in the later seasons to end it. But that might be just because I’m still trying to end it in these books here. I’m working on ‘The Winds of Winter’ even now as I have been for the best part of a decade. And hopefully I’m going to get to that end soon and then people can argue about which ending they like better.”
I’m sure I know where I’ll land, George.
(via Yahoo, image: HBO)
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