Excited about A Game of Thrones yet? We here at Slice of SciFi are.
As we countdown to the series debut on Sunday, producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss sat down with Blastr to answer some burning questions about the show.
One question posed was whether best-selling author George R.R. Martin was brought in to appease hard-core fans of the novels and if he’d still be around in a producer role when and if season two hits screens.
“We wouldn’t have had it any other way. We think his episode is great, and if we’re lucky enough to get another season, we’re confident his episode for that season will be great as well. How he can write for the show in addition to writing the books and doing the 10,000 other things he does is beyond us,” says Beinoff.
As for whether or not ten hours is enough time to tell the story, the producers think it is.
“I think we got all the primary characters and storylines in there,” Beinoff says. “There are people and places missing that it would have been nice to see, but none of their absences quite rise to the ‘kill us’ level. We still have to make certain cuts, of course, but we have a far bigger canvas. And because it’s HBO, there’s no pressure to cut the more adult themes from the books—the sexual heat, bloody violence and profane language that would have been excised from a PG-13 studio movie.”
Looking ahead, many fans say how the books are structured could make it difficult to adapt installments beyond the second in the series. But the producers are already thinking ahead to when that crops up.
“Well, when we get to books four and five, they all take place concurrently, so there would need to be some shuffling around there to make them work,” says Weiss. “And Storm of Swords (book three) is extremely long. But really, the only way to tell how they’ll lay out over a season is to do the work and lay them out. It’s hard to predict until you do it.”
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