Oh, actually, 8 Seasons…

In what I see as a complete U-Turn, HBO’s President, Michael Lombardo, he is now saying that Game of Thrones will go at least eight seasons. I must admit that this does genuinely frustrate me as a fan of the television series. For years HBO and the writers have told us that they’ve always planned for seven series and have been producing the show in a way that it will keep its pace for those entire seven series. This week’s comments change everything:

“Seven-seasons-and-out has never been the [internal] conversation,” Lombardo told critics at the Television Critics Association’s press tour. “The question is how much beyond seven are we going to do. [Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are] feel like there’s two more years after six. I would always love for them to change their minds. That’s what we’re looking at right now.”

What is strange about these new ‘feelings’ is that when Benioff and Weiss were commenting about the possibility of anything more than seven seasonsless than a year ago they made it very clear that they knew the ending and they wanted to take the shortest route possible towards it – this would take seven seasons. At some points during their discussions on the subject, it almost sounded like they were going to struggle to come up with enough material to connect the dots between the ending of book five and the known ending given to them by Martin before they began filming even season one. Indeed, despite his most recent comments, Lombardo seemed very much to agree with them too. Last year we reported him being quite firm in saying that: “We don’t want to become a show that outstays its welcome and tries to turn each book into three seasons. Part of what we love about these books and the show is this sense of momentum and building toward something. If we tried to turn this into a 10-season show we’d strangle the golden goose.”

I, personally, was quite happy with this. If they know the ending they can simply pick up from the end of book five and get us there without taking too many liberties. I think that would work. Once the books come out they could then work as an expansion to my understanding of events as a result of the TV show as opposed to something completely different. When you start taking detours and adding filler or experimenting with your own ideas you end up playing with fire. Do the writers know anything about the White Walkers? Do they know whether Jon Snow is alive or dead? Do they know what happens to Arya or Bran next? What role will the dragons or Dire Wolves play in books 6 and 7? These kinds of questions that the writers likely don’t know the answers to will force the kinds of things aforementioned. In addition, no one wants new, expanded plot-threads that serve no purpose but to pad out a couple of seasons to milk the franchise or in a hope the sixth book comes out in the meantime. Anyone seen Naruto? *gulp*

Despite my dread for what this could lead to, it wasn’t all doom and gloom in the interview. There was another U-Turn by HBO and this one I see as a positive: they are now coming round to the idea of producing prequels. Lombardo said. “It really would depend fully on what [the writers] want to do … there’s enormous storytelling to be mined in a prequel.”

Martin himself quite liked the idea of prequels, although it should be said that his idea was for prequels adapted from the Dunk and Egg stories to serve as fillers whilst the TV series was put on hiatus until he was able to write books six and seven – something that thankfully HBO wrote off due to the kids ageing quickly and them having little faith Martin’s book would be out anytime soon. Having read and enjoyed Martin’s Hedge Knight works, I’d be absolutely delighted to see them be adapted for screen once Game of Thrones is put to bed.

Anyway, enough of my thoughts and feelings, what do you guys reckon? I’m sure that there are some of you out there who will love the idea of more seasons of one of televisions best running series.

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