Renewed for Season 5 AND Season 6! Apparently those 6.6 million viewers really made HBO happy.
hepcat
5083
I’m guessing the Starks are wishing they’d just gone with take out now…
Makes sense, HBO extended D&D’s contract for about that long.
There’s a really extensive interview with D&D on Vanity Fair, and one of the things that pushed HBO to greenlight the series (especially after the terrible pilot that they ended up reshooting for the series) was that fantasy can really appeal internationally, whereas a lot of American shows focus on American culture, and that can be a disadvantage in some ways. And, sure enough, Game of Thrones is gigantic overseas. Foreign networks really want the rights to air the series in their respective countries; it’s a big, prestigious get for them. For example, GOT is easily Sky Atlantic’s biggest hit.
ROFLMAO @ The Every F***ing Chicken In This Room Deal
I feel like fantasy and historical TV is always international friendly, just because it’s Brits all the way down the credits. I imagine Rome was pretty big for Sky Atlantic?
Wasn’t Rome an HBO/BBC coproduction?
It was. Sky Atlantic didn’t exist.
The fact that it was a Beeb co-production is partly why it killed it. The Beeb started to tighten the belt right around then, and when it dropped out, HBO was left holding the bag.
There was some early speculation that HBO might make GOT a co-production to spread the costs, but Rome basically soured them on that. Plus, it now doesn’t have to share any of the rewards.
Benhur
5089
I didn’t know this. Is there more information about them reshooting the pilot because it was terrible?
Re. the “brits all the way down” in the credits, my ex always laughs at the fact that GoT is like heaven for old british character actors.
For us older brits, a lot of the old, craggy folks you see in GoT are familiar faces, some of them well-loved character actors from fondly-remembered UK shows and cinema, faces that we haven’t seen for years and years, and it’s heartwarming to see all these old dudes and dudettes getting another day in the sun.
They’ve talked about here and there, and the facts are well known.
The pilot was directed by Tom McCarthy, the director of The Station Agent and The Visitor. (Also an actor who appeared on The Wire and a bunch of things, including 2012 with Amanda Peet, aka, Mrs David Benioff).
You can read about it here. Only a few scenes survived the cut and were incorporated into the first episode; you can tell because Sean Bean’s hair goes from mangy and tired to almost modern and sleek. It’s the scene in the Winterfell crypts, and the scene where they’re about to ride off on the hunt.
There were all sorts of problems with the pilot. 1. They didn’t really explain who these people were, so people who watched it didn’t realize that Jaime and Cersei were brother and sister. 2. They recast Caitlin and Dany, so anything with those two had to be redone (but you can tell in the feast scene that they used the original footage of Sansa responding to Cersei’s questions that was shot a year earlier, because suddenly she looks like she’s 12.) 3. Everything looked too “new” from the hair to the clothes. So they really went around distressing everything.
More details here.
And in the original promo photo they sent out when they announced they were going to series, look at Ned and compare that to the Ned in Season 1.
Same scene, way different look.
Curses. I can’t blame you guys for wanting to talk in this thread since you’ve read the books, but there’s also lots of good non-spoiler conversation happening here, with pretty much nobody talking in the other thread.
Maybe I’ll just try to read here very carefully. Can’t be any riskier than using the rest of the internet, right? Way back in season 2 I was trying to figure out how to spell Jaime Lannister, so I started typing it into Google and got about as far as “Jaim” before I was getting “Jaime Lannister hand cut off” as an autocomplete suggestion. Good times.
I like to think we can coexist if people who want to talk about book related matters use spoiler tags in such discussions.
Obviously that’d be super for me, but I wouldn’t want to suggest/impose that if you guys have been talking freely about the books all along.
Gendal
5095
You should just read the books so you are spoiled in a good way rather than having everything ruined by google autocomplete and this thread.
Then the other thread becomes fun if only to see a couple people repeatedly make the worst predictions time and time again.
Will season 4 hit book 4 at all?
Gil102
5097
I also highly recommend reading the books. One of the Hound’s best lines is in the book, but wasn’t in the show. And so much happens…so, so, SO much. Arya is probably my favorite character ever. EVER.
Maybe a wee bit. Though I’d think the season would end exactly where Book 3 ends… but honestly, Book 3 and Brienne’s last bit in Book 4 end so similarly, I wonder if they will combine the two somehow.
— Alan
Zuwadza
5099
I will reiterate that you should read the books. I read them all after last season and personally I think it just makes the show better.
Avtar
5100
That would make a good final scene for the season actually, and I think having Brienne there during the reveal would work even better than the book actually. I have a feeling alot of Brienne’s stuff will be cut, I mean for most of book 4 she really just wanders around with Pod, right? And in 3 she just hangs out in the King’s Landing talking to some people. Just send her off in a few episodes instead of next season and have her get captured by Lady Stoneheart(being revealed for the first time to us as viewers as well) as a season ending cliffhanger, that would be pretty great.
