Moviefone Editorial

Tag: david-benioff

  • ‘Game of Thrones’ Showrunners Confirm There Are Only Two More Seasons Left

    WARNING: This post contains SPOILERS about last Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” season finale.

    While Game of Thrones” will end its run with two more abbreviated seasons, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have now definitively confirmed that will indeed be the case.

    In an interview with Deadline, Benioff and Weiss broke down the epic season six finale and discussed how it will affect the upcoming seventh season, and also explained how they are approaching their endgame for the series. According to the showrunners, as they move past author George R.R. Martin’s source material, they have a very specific road map in mind — and it’s a lot shorter than most fans would hope.

    “It’s two more seasons we’re talking about,” Benioff told Deadline, echoing comments he and Weiss made earlier this year about ending the show on a pair of shorter-than-normal seasons. “From pretty close to the beginning, we talked about doing this in 70-75 hours, and that’s what we’ll end up with. Call it 73 for now.”

    That means that there’s potentially only 13 more episodes of “Thrones” left, though according to the producers, that’s intentional, since they don’t want to overstay their welcome with viewers. But that’s not their only motivation.

    “We’re trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end,” Benioff explained. ” … [W]e’ve known the end for quite some time and we’re hurtling towards it.”

    He continued:

    Those last images from the show that aired [Sunday] night showed that. Daenerys is finally coming back to Westeros; Jon Snow is king of the North and Cersei is sitting on the Iron Throne. And we know the Night King is up there, waiting for all of them. The pieces are on the board now. Some of the pieces have been removed from the board and we are heading toward the end game. The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it’s not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it’s trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We’re definitely heading into the end game now.

    For more from the showrunners, read the entire Deadline interview here. Season seven of “Game of Thrones” begins production this summer, and will likely premiere on HBO sometime in 2017.

    [via: Deadline]

    Photo credit: HBO

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  • Why ‘The Walking Dead’ Creator Is ‘Disappointed’ With ‘Game of Thrones’ Author

    UPDATE: Robert Kirkman clarified, and joked about, his GRRM quote in a series of tweets:


    Original post:

    There’s a funky kind of nerd rivalry happening with “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead.” They are both insanely popular, with crossover fan bases, and both based on ongoing print series that are now slightly-to-very different from the TV versions. TWD creator Robert Kirkman just did an interview with Rolling Stone, and he dragged GoT author George R.R. Martin into the story to shame! shame! shame! him for spoiling his own work.

    Kirkman, “Walking Dead” comic book writer and TV series executive producer, is now working many, many issues ahead of the storyline of the AMC show, which premieres Season 7 in October. On the other side of the coin, GRRM has yet to finish the behemoth tome that will be the sixth of seven books in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. The first book, “Game of Thrones,” became the title of the HBO show that is currently covering new ground in Season 6.

    GoT viewers are now getting a mix of material from previously published books; new material that’s exclusive to the show; and some stuff that will be in the next books, so it’s being “spoiled” by HBO. Kirkman shamed GRRM in Rolling Stone for telling GoT showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss the major bullet points and end game for the rest of his series. That’s not something RK would ever do for showrunner Scott M. Gimple on “The Walking Dead.”

    Here’s that portion of the Rolling Stone Q&A:

    Do you have an end game for Dead in mind?
    For the books? I do. I know how the story wraps up. The big question is when and how far in the distance that is. But I think that most people think, oh, why would he end it? It’s so successful, he’s going to keep throwing shit at the wall to keep it going. And that’s not going to happen. You’ll eventually be able to see that it all kind of comes together.

    There’s still plenty of story for the TV series to get to; you could tell the writers where you’re going, and …
    I would never do that. That’s the one thing I’m disappointed in George R.R. Martin for doing. He should have just been like, F-ck you. You make it up now, I’ll get to mine when I’m ready.

    Eh. Would you have done that, if you were GRRM? It’s a tricky spot to be in. This is his story, so you can understand if he wants the showrunners to hit the big picture notes, even if it will never be *the* definitive adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire” since they already skipped so much and changed so many details. But the overall storyline?

    Maybe it’s good that he told D&D so they stay true to GRRM’s characters. Maybe the show should’ve waited a few years to premiere, so there was a better chance of aligning with the books. Or maybe they should’ve added more seasons to the show, with two covering each book so they cover more ground and give more time to finish the story. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But plenty of GoT viewers don’t even read the books, and may not even pick them up until the series is finished, if at all.

    It sucks that book readers are going to be confused by book-to-TV-to-book changes when “The Winds of Winter” finally arrives, but it’s not like Robert Kirkman’s comic book is being slavishly adapted for TV either. Not at all. And both writers are credited as executive producers on their respective shows — which have helped to make them super rich — so they do have responsibilities to their showrunners, as opposed to acting like they are competing with them.

    By the way, slightly off topic but also from the Rolling Stone interview, here’s RK defending the controversial Season 6 finale cliffhanger:

    Did it surprise you when people were up in arms over the recent season finale?
    We knew that people might be upset, but come on! Everybody wants to see what happened. That’s what a cliffhanger is. I’ll probably get crucified for this, but I feel like there’s a culture of instant gratification now: Netflix, social media, everything is on demand at all times. Nothing is withheld. You can’t do 52 episodes a year. It’s just not feasibly possible. If you can do something that has people talking about your show in that gap between seasons, that’s great. We just ask that if you’ve enjoyed the show so far, just know, Season Seven is going to be pretty great.

    It remains to be seen whether showrunner Gimple stuck with Kirkman’s comic book storyline on that cliffhanger reveal or not.

    Anyway, where do you stand on all of this? Would you, as Kirkman or GRRM, share your end game plan with the showrunners or tell them to make it up so you can keep your secrets for the page?

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  • ‘Game of Thrones’ Showrunners Apologize for Aftermath of Hodor Reveal

    Warning: Spoilers ahead from the most recent “Game of Thrones” Season 6, Episode 5, “The Door.”

    “Game of Thrones” showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff have a lot to answer for after six seasons of some pretty sick stuff on HBO. But they never apologize. They may even be closer to Joffrey and Ramsay than we’d like to think. So what a pleasant surprise to see them — surrounded by piles of money, of course — in a taped bit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” They finally said they’re sorry, although not quite for what had fans sobbing this past week.

    Weiss: “We’d like to apologize for Sunday’s episode.”

    Benioff: “Not for killing Hodor. We kill a lot of main characters.”

    Weiss: “We’ve killed 739 main characters so far.”

    Benioff: “We’re sorry for all the idiots who, from now on, will be shouting ‘Hodor!’ every time you go through a door.”

    Weiss: “We forgot how annoying people can be. That’s our bad.”

    Benioff: “We should’ve seen that coming.”

    Watch the video to see examples:

    People really are the worst. D&D also said they can kill people in real life, and they can also kill each other — which seems like the real ending ahead of us. After all, why do we have two showrunners? There’s only one Iron Throne. Then again, there are three dragons … so maybe Jimmy Kimmel is meant to join them as the third?

    Have you experienced any people shouting “Hodor!” instead of “hold the door”? Just tell them “Valar morghulis” and follow with a pointed look and a creepy smile.

    “Game of Thrones” continues this Sunday, May 29 with Episode 6, “Blood of My Blood,” and we can only imagine more death and destruction is ahead. #SavetheDirewolves

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  • ‘Game of Thrones’ May End After Two Shorter Seasons

    Season six of “Game of Thrones” still hasn’t premiered yet, but showrunners are already mapping out the series’s end — and it may be a shorter goodbye than fans would like.

    In an interview with Variety, “Thrones” executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said that their current vision for how the show should end entails two more seasons after the upcoming sixth, but only 13 episodes between them. Season seven would have seven episodes, they said, while season eight (the potential final season) would have six, down from the usual 10 that the show has produced each season so far.

    “I think we’re down to our final 13 episodes after this season. We’re heading into the final lap,” Benioff told the trade. “That’s the guess, though nothing is yet set in stone, but that’s what we’re looking at.”

    Variety also spoke to HBO programming president Michael Lombardo, who confirmed that he had discussed this abbreviated two-season plan with the showrunners.

    “Because where these narratives go, it feels like another two years to them,” Lombardo told Variety. “As a television executive, as a fan, do I wish they said another six years? I do.”

    But the exec left some room for fans worried about saying goodbye over such a short episode count.

    “I’m always an optimist, and I do believe we will figure this out,” Lombardo said.

    The timeframe in which to do so is shrinking, though, since season seven of “Game of Thrones” begins production in July. We hope Benioff and Weiss will have some more concrete answers for fans soon.

    In the meantime, season six of the series debuts on HBO on April 24.

    [via: Variety]

    Photo credit: Helen Sloan/HBO

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  • The Original ‘Game of Thrones’ Pilot Was a ‘Painful’ ‘Piece of S–t’

    game of thrones, game of thrones pilotThe original “Game of Thrones” pilot has become the stuff of television legend, since it featured significantly different plots, and several different main actors, from the final product that audiences saw on HBO back in 2011, and was widely considered pretty terrible. Now, the showrunners have recently discussed just how bad their first crack at adapting George R.R. Martin’s books really was, and it turns out that that first pilot was “a complete piece of s–t.”

    That assessment came courtesy of screenwriter Craig Mazin (the “Hangover” sequels, “Identity Thief”), who together with fellow writer John August (“Big Fish”) runs the podcast Scriptnotes. The pair hosted “Thrones” showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff on a recent episode for a frank discussion about the fantasy drama’s pilot, which Mazin saw at a screening for friends organized by Weiss and Benioff back in 2010.

    It didn’t go well.

    “Watching them watch that original pilot was one of the most painful experiences of my life,” Weiss recalled. “As soon as it finished, Craig said, ‘You guys have a massive problem.’”

    Turns out Weiss and Benioff agreed.

    “I was taking notes,” Benioff said of the screening, “and I had this yellow legal pad, and I just remembered writing in all caps, ‘MASSIVE PROBLEM,’ and it’s all I could think about the rest of the night. Craig didn’t really have any great ideas except that he said, ‘Change everything.’”

    It turns out that that was great advice, though, since that’s pretty much exactly what Weiss and Benioff did. Director Tom McCarthy (now an Oscar nominee for “Spotlight”) was replaced by Timothy Van Patten, who re-shot about 90 percent of the pilot. That much reworking is usually a sign of major problems to come with most series; thankfully, with “Thrones,” it was all for the better, as Mazin soon discovered. He said on Scriptnotes:

    I will never forget being invited to the premiere of the first season. I went in just thinking (skeptically), “Well, I guess we’ll just see how this goes.” I sat there and this show unfolds and I am stunned. Stunned. And I very specifically remember walking out and I said to [Weiss and Benioff], “That is the biggest rescue in Hollywood history.” Because it wasn’t just that they had saved something bad and turned it really good. You had saved a complete piece of s–t and turned it into something brilliant. That never happens!

    Multiple Emmys later, it looks like things have worked out okay for the “GOT” crew.

    [via: Scriptnotes, h/t Vanity Fair]

    Photo credit: HBO

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  • TCA: ‘Game of Thrones’ May Get 8 Seasons and a Prequel Series

    Game of ThronesThere was lots of “Game of Thrones” scoop during HBO’s presentation Thursday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, including the revelation that there may be more “Thrones” on the way than initially expected.

    The hit fantasy series, which just wrapped its fifth season, has been renewed through a seventh season by the cable network, and it was widely considered all but a done deal that that seventh season would be the show’s last. Not so, said HBO programming president Michael Lombardo during Thursday’s panel.

    “Seven-seasons-and-out has never been the [internal] conversation,” Lombardo told critics of the show’s endgame. “The question is: how much beyond seven are we going to do? Obviously we’re shooting six now, hopefully discussing seven. [Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] feel like there’s two more years after six. I would always love for them to change their minds, but that’s what we’re looking at right now.”

    But that doesn’t mean that “Game of Thrones” would leave HBO forever after season eight. There’s always potential for a prequel series, too, the exec said, though nothing is set in stone just yet.

    “I would be open to anything that Dan and David wanted to do, about ‘Game of Thrones’ or any subject matter,” Lombardo said. ” … It really would depend fully on what they wanted to do. I think … there’s enormous storytelling to be mined in a prequel, if [author George R.R. Martin] and Dan and David decide they want to tackle that.”

    We’ll have to see what Benioff, Weiss, and Martin have up their sleeves before we cosign on a potential prequel, but we’re intrigued nonetheless.

    Season six of “Game of Thrones” is currently in production. No word yet on a premiere date.

    [via: Vanity Fair]

    Photo credit: HBO

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  • Sadly, a Cool ‘Game of Thrones’ Rumor Was Just Shot Down

    “Game of Thrones” is always killing our dreams. Then again, death isn’t always The End in George R.R. Martin’s world, and in this case, it’s just a delay. No, we’re not talking more about Jon Snow (he’s totally coming back), this time we mean the long-awaited sixth book in GRRM’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. There are seven books coming in total and it has been four years since book five, “A Dance With Dragons,” was published. Fans are hoping “The Winds of Winter” will be published before “Game of Thrones” Season 6 arrives in 2016. That may still be the case — and excerpts have been shared online — but a rumor was spreading that there was already a manuscript out, read by the Season 6 directors as they prepared the new season.

    It all started from a misunderstanding, then led to a game of telephone, based on director Jack Bender’s Reddit AMA. He’s one of the directors helming episodes for Season 6, and as WinterIsComing relayed, he had this exchange during his AMA:

    Q: “Were you able to read an advance copy of Book 6 of Game of Thrones to prepare for directing next season’s episodes?”

    A: “Yes.”

    Yes! It sounded promising, but apparently it was too good to be true. That convo started to spread as a hint to “Winds of Winter” being done and making its rounds to The Powers That Be for use in the HBO show’s Season 6 and — fans hoped — published soon for the rest of us. However, cold water was splashed on the idea by Elio García and Linda Antonsson, who co-wrote “The World of Ice and Fire” along with GRRM.

    Here are their tweets, referencing GoT showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss as “D&D”:

    Sad trombone. Meanwhile, the highest authority is GRRM himself, and his latest tweet does not address the speculation, it’s just a look at his own fine self:

    So cute! Love it. Now get back to work.

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  • HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ Will Spoil the End of George R.R. Martin’s Book Series (VIDEO)

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    Like winter, Game of Thrones” is based.

    During an appearance at the Oxford Union, “Thrones” creators David Benioff and Daniel Brett Weiss confirmed that the series will eventually overtake its source material, and feature plotlines that haven’t been published yet — potentially years before Martin finishes writing and releasing the last two tomes in the book series. Benioff fielded a question about the possibility of book spoilers by explaining that showrunners have been in close contact with Martin to discuss the strategy for such an occurrence, but added succinctly, “The show must go on.”

    Here’s Benioff’s answer to the query in full:

    We’ve been talking to [Martin] for a while about this. The fact is, we didn’t want to catch up. Obviously, we would hope that the books would come out ahead of the show. But at the same time, George has his process. And if it takes him 20 years to finish the series, that’s what it should take him. He’s writing, to my mind, the great fantasy epic of our time. So we can’t rush him and I wouldn’t want to rush him. [But] at the same time, we can’t put the show on hiatus. …

    So we have to kind of keep pushing forward. Luckily, we’ve been talking about this with George for a long time, ever since we saw this could happen, and we know where things are heading. So we’ll eventually basically meet up at pretty much the same place where George is going [in “A Dream of Spring”]. There might be a few deviations along the route, but we’re heading towards the same destination. I kind of wish there were some things we didn’t have to spoil in terms of the books, but we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. So the show must go on. …

    I think the thing that’s kind of fun for George is the idea that he can still have surprises for people even once they’ve watched the show through to the conclusion. There are certain things that are going to happen in the books that are different from the show, and I think people who love the show and want more — want to know more about the characters, want to know more about the different characters who might not have made the cut for the show — will be able to turn to the books.

    We’re sure that fans of Martin’s series will be disappointed if “Thrones” spoils the ending, but given Martin’s notoriously-slow writing process, it seemed inevitable that something like this would happen. And Benioff’s note about Martin throwing in extra character details in the two remaining books, “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring,” seems like the most fair compromise the two parties could reach under these circumstances.

    However this situation plays out, we have no doubt that “Game of Thrones” will remain as popular as ever. Check out the full video of Benioff and Weiss’s appearance — which also includes actors Kit Harington and John Bradley — below.

    The fifth season premieres on HBO on April 12.

    [via: Oxford Union, h/t HitFix]