David, Dan, HBO discuss Game of Thrones’ uncertain beginnings

It’s easy to forget that, before it became an international phenomenon beloved by millions, Game of Thrones was just a another TV pitch doomed to live or die depending on whether network executives liked it. Fast Company recently sat down with showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, together with HBO Head of Programming Michael Lombardo and CEO Richard Plepler, to discuss the show’s early, uncertain days in development.

Back in 2008, before HBO was the Game of Thrones network, it was probably best known The Sopranos, The Wire, and Sex and the City, three shows that were very much rooted in the real world. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, was firmly planted in the world of high fantasy, not always a respected genre, and didn’t seem like it belonged at the network. However, Lombardo and Plepler were wary about trying to replicate past successes at the expense of taking new risks. They zigged when they were expected to zag by greenlighting True Blood, a show about vampires, and were receptive to the possibilities of Game of Thrones when they got a look at the script for the pilot.

“I had not read the books,” Lombardo said. “And when I read the script, I thought, this is dazzling. It’s just a great hour script. And Richard and I talked about it, we met with Dan and David. These guys are very serious, and I mean that in the best possible way. These are not two guys that are interested in telling a story about dragons. They didn’t come at this because they were interested in visual effects. They were really, profoundly, emotionally moved by the story of these warring families and about the thirst for power and love and validation.”

The pilot was greenlit, but faced a roadblock when the BBC, originally a production partner, pulled out. That meant that HBO had to foot the bill for this very expensive series by itself, a risky proposition. According to the interview, Lombardo made the decision to go ahead anyway after he saw Dan Weiss at the gym riding a recumbent bicycle and reading a dog-eared copy of A Game of Thrones. Weiss was highlighting select passages as he went. “I thought, oh my God— he has no idea I’m here, he’s read this 20 times, and he’s still . . . . It’s that kind of focus (that made me believe) these are the right guys for us to do a show with.”

So there you go. Game of Thrones happened because Dan Weiss bothered to work out one morning. Let that be a lesson to all of us to hit the gym more often.

Anyway, David and Dan shot the pilot, but weren’t pleased with it. “We were not that happy with what we’d done,” Weiss said. “We knew that it could be better. But for us to make it better than that would have required us to get the go ahead on the series. We were told by someone who watched it with Richard that when it was done, he stood up and pumped his fist in the air, which was very far from our own reaction to the pilot we had shot. To his credit, he saw through the mistakes that we couldn’t.”

HBO ended up reshooting around 80-90% of the original pilot, which means there’s probably a bootlegger’s paradise worth of unused footage lying around somewhere that needs to make it’s way onto the internet as soon as possible. The network went for it, and David and Dan jetted off to Ireland in their new roles as showrunners to shoot the first season. They were inexperienced, considered the pilot a failure, and weren’t convinced that the show would amount to anything more than “a very expensive also-ran.” Still, further encouragement from Richard Plepler saw them through the rough spots, and by the time Ned Stark’s head got chopped off, they knew the show was a hit.

“The moment we felt it was working was when Ned is executed during season one,” Benioff said.” And it sort of seemed like the Internet blew up––we were getting so many emails like, what have you done? The fact that we got that reaction to a fictional character…”

And the rest is record-breaking viewership, universal acclaim, and websites dedicated entirely to the series. Bless Dan Weiss’ dedication to physical fitness, Plepler’s foresight, and the fans who freaked out after Ned Stark’s close encounter with the business end of Ice. In days like these, when interest in the show is at an apex, it pays to remember that it almost didn’t get made at all. What would we have done with our Sunday nights then?

• Published on 04/10/2015 at 2:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 04/10/2015 at 3:59 PM CDT