Three more interviews with David & Dan

Executive producers and writers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have been on the publicity circuit for Game of Thrones since early January with nary a break. Here are three recent articles where David & Dan talked Thrones, each providing some new and interesting tidbits.

First, this interview with AOL TV’s Mo Ryan, who sat down with the pair at the Winter TCA press tour in Jan. Some good info here, including a very spoilery bit about the final scene season one. Be sure to read it only if you’ve read the entire first book. I also liked this quote from Benioff about the human drama present in the show:

Well, I think what you say is — you’re absolutely right when you [talk about] bringing it to the human level. And again, this all goes back to the first time — it’s almost five years ago now — that we brought it to HBO. They were very nervous, you know, trying to do an epic fantasy for television. Even though HBO is much more generous with their budgets than many people are with television budgets, it’s still a television budget and you’re trying to shoot something on television schedule. We can’t do the Peter Jackson [‘Lord of the Rings’] thing where he’s spending two years in New Zealand and has weeks with helicopters shooting and armies of 500,000 orcs fighting a million elves or whatever. We’re never going to be able to compete on that level.

But where we can compete and where we think we can actually do better than movies is getting down and dirty with those people and being very intimate with them and lavishing 10 hours on these characters and getting to know them better than you ever could with movies.

The next article featuring D&D is this piece by Charlie Jane Anders at sci-fi blog io9. Quite a few cool bits of interesting info is this one, most of it positive, however this part got me a little worried about what lies ahead:

Benioff said they “wouldn’t make any guarantees about anything,” but reiterated that they’re passionate about being true to the books. At the same time, Weiss pointed out that they couldn’t possibly have the casting budget to include all of the characters who turn up in A Clash of Kings, the second book. Already, they’ve had to cut or combine some minor characters in the first book, but in the second season they might actually have to cut some comparatively major characters just to avoid having a cast of thousands.

And lastly, this piece at TV Guide focuses on the ending of the series and how Benioff and Weiss have talked with George R. R. Martin about where this story is going. Not only have they been given early access to A Dance with Dragons (they’ve read the first 600 pages), but they even know how the series will end — and have already begun talking about that final episode.

“We’ve talked through what the final episode, the final season will be.” Executive producer David Benioff adds: “We can’t wait to write that episode. Of the many different fears we have about the show, long-term momentum is not one of them. We’re very confident.”

Winter Is Coming: They’re already thinking about the final season? I guess that is good. As for me, I’m just hoping we can get through A Storm of Swords, anything after that will be a bonus.

• Published on 04/08/2011 at 9:40 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/20/2016 at 6:04 PM CDT