Benioff and Weiss talk Game of Thrones convergence with the books

We are five days away from the Game of Thrones Season 5 premiere. Five days away from finally being able to watch our favorite characters take the next step in their journeys. Regardless of whether Game of Thrones ends in 7 seasons or 8, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have a gargantuan task in front of them, since they’ve advertised Season 5 as being the beginning of the end.

The dynamic duo sat down with Zap2it to discuss Season 5 and the fact that, for the first time in the show’s history, book readers will be bombarded with spoilers for George R.R. Martin’s 6th and 7th books, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.

D&D start the interview off by talking about the challenges of producing a show that GRRM meant to be unproduceable.

“George always said he wrote them to be unproduceable. As the story progresses, the sheer production challenges increase. HBO is extremely supportive — but if we want to air in late March/early April every year as we’ve been doing thus far, there are only so many days we can shoot, and only so much postproduction we can jam in and still maintain quality.”

I never knew that Martin had made that statement. Many fans of the books begrudge D&D for allegedly dumbing down the material for non-book readers, or sensationalizing portions of A Song of Ice and Fire where a PoV character spends a chapter on an inner monologue.

However, as a person who is currently on his 5th re-read of the series, I think that’s an unfair characterization of Benioff and Weiss, and non-book readers, as a whole.

“As the scale and scope of the events in the books increase, so do the scale and scope of the book narrative and character list.”

In a 10 episode-a-season slate, the challenge has to increase with each season. The sole reason I personally believe that Game of Thrones will last 8 seasons is because of the sheer size of A Dance with Dragons.

“Ten episodes is the absolute maximum we can do in a year; it’s already a 52-week-a-year job for many people. And in terms of story and characters, there’s simply a carrying capacity that any TV show has — the amount of information you can have in play before people lose track of what’s going on, and therefore lose interest. We think we operate right on the edge of that carrying capacity. So the biggest challenge in the adaptation has been resisting the urge to expand, and finding a way to start contracting, because in show terms, it’s time for that to happen.”

When asked about the shocking deaths of Seasons 1-4 and the reported shocking and surprising deaths that are coming in Season 5, D&D had this to say:

“Sometimes they won’t be shocking, we don’t think. Sometimes they’ll feel tragically inevitable. In either case, if they’re born from dramatic necessity and not some kind of “gotcha!” impulse, we don’t think there will be death fatigue. Or, no moreso[sic] than there was before the show started. Speaking only for ourselves, we are well and truly over the whole death thing.”

Zap2it asked about the fact that Benioff and Weiss have teased that characters and story-lines will be converging this season.

“A lot of the convergences occur naturally, in the course of exploring what the characters want and where they are heading. And just because people converge doesn’t mean they automatically annihilate each other. You have a violent mind. Sometimes they just spread out a blanket and sit down to tea and crumpets.”

I don’t necessarily think that the interviewer has a violent mind. I think that as viewers of the show, and/or fans of the books, we have been programmed to think that the story will ultimately culminate in beautiful violence. The interview takes a momentary humorous turn, when D&D were asked about Bran and Meera.

“Bran and Meera have both been eaten offscreen. At first, the creature that ate them comes off as dangerous, but it is later revealed to be more of a tragic figure.“

I KNEW IT! The Three-Eyed Raven is a cannibalistic monster, who eats his victims only after Leaf (the child of the forest) cooks them with magic fireballs!

Finally, D&D were asked if there was a scene from the books that was left out of previous seasons, that they most regretted being left out.

“There was a battle in Season 1 where Tyrion was going to go into battle behind the Mountain. Alan Taylor had planned it, it was going to be great. And then we ran out of money. We loved Alan’s workaround, however (in episode 109, where Tyrion gets literally knocked out of the battle). And it made Tyrion’s Blackwater battle more fresh … so no blood, no foul.”

I’ve always hated the fact that Tyrion’s first battle was omitted from the show, since it let him be a bad-ass and helped shed his image as an incapable and bumbling high-born snob.

This interview does provide a better look at Benioff and Weiss, who have taken a bad rap from book purists, and hopefully it will help both the Sullied and Unsullied come together in their understanding of the show as a completely separate from the books.

• Published on 04/07/2015 at 2:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:05 PM CDT