Despite the divisive eighth season, audiences still consider Game of Thrones one of the best TV shows ever. It marked a peak period of TV viewing where people waited with high anticipation for the next week to drop to watch what happens next. The series has won multiple Emmys, and it has spawned several spinoffs.
George R.R. Martin always wanted to adapt the books in his beloved series, A Song of Ice and Fire. However, the scale, complexity, and dark subject matter of the novels proved that it would be a herculean task to adapt to live-action, almost to the point of being unfilmable. Martin’s hopes would soon be made to come true.
George R.R Martin Was Not Satisfied With Initial Pitches for Game of Thrones
The early 2000s proved to be a special time for fantasy storytelling with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy enthralling audiences and winning awards. George R.R. Martin had already written several materials, including books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and the industry started showing interest in adapting them.
However, the books were very intricate, complex, and humungous in scale, with many characters being a part of the politics of the narrative. When the industry first saw the books being adapted to film, Martin believed that none were able to properly come up with a convincing pitch that did justice to his books.
In an interview with Time, Martin revealed that many filmmakers thought that the source material was too big and several characters needed to be cut down, with Jon Snow or Daenerys as the central character. He rejected all those pitches, and he finally was satisfied when David Benioff and D. B. Weiss came into the picture, and all parties agreed that TV would be the perfect place for its adaptation. Martins said,
I had a number of meetings long before David and Dan, with people who said this is the next Lord of the Rings franchise. But they couldn’t get a handle on the size of the material, the very thing that I set out to do. I had all these meetings saying, ‘There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. Or ‘Daenerys is the central character’.
I decided the only way to do this would be for HBO, or a similar network — Showtime, Starz, or premium cable. And when my manager set up the lunch with David and Dan, they were primarily feature writers, and they’d been sent the books with features in mind. But they read it and came to the same conclusion: This can’t be done as a feature.
Martin didn’t fall for corporate greed for money for incapable filmmakers doing a botched job at adapting his material. He was patient and waited for the right guys who understood the material. Benioff and Weiss did an incredible job with the material (that became Game of Thrones), and they created something exceptional that will be remembered forever.
House of the Dragon Co-Creator Compares Season 2 To Spy Narratives Like James Bond
House of the Dragon season 2 is finally upon audiences, and the new season is set to be an intense war between former best friends Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower. The battle for the Iron Throne will be in pure Game of Thrones fashion, a bunch of scheming, plotting, and shocking narratives that will test the audience’s loyalties to their favorite characters.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, series co-creator Ryan Condell stated that the battle of the throne is not going to be through an all-out bloody war, but a psychological one, reminiscent of the Cold War. All the outsmarting, plotting, and spy mind games in the show will remind one of one of the classic James Bond spy narratives that audiences love. Condell said,
Season 2 is the march to war. It’s really a cold war because each side is trying to undeniably win the throne for themselves without going to all-out dragon war. We do that through plotting and backstabbing and assassination and spy games and all the things that you would see in a classic James Bond Cold War thriller.
Season 2 is expected to be much bigger and narratively engaging due to the incredible setup of season 1. The reviews for season 2 hint that the latest season might be even better than season 1, and fans can’t wait to see what unfolds.
The first episode of House of the Dragon season 2 hits Max on June 16, 2024, with the remaining 7 episodes dropping weekly.
