For a while there, Game of Thrones was the biggest thing on the planet, but as we know, the HBO series didn’t exactly stick the landing. Series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were ready to bring the series to a close, but if original creator George R.R. Martin had his way, Game of Thrones would have lasted for 10 seasons.
According to James Andrew Miller’s Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers (via Insider), George R.R. Martin’s agent Paul Haas said that Martin flew out in person to ask former HBO CEO Richard Plepler to do 10 seasons of Games of Thrones.
George would fly to New York to have lunch with Plepler, to beg him to do ten seasons of ten episodes because there was enough material for it and to tell him it would be a more satisfying and more entertaining experience.
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Stretching the story out to 10 seasons likely would have helped with the rather speedy pace of the shortened final seasons, and George R.R. Martin might have thought it would give him more time to finish writing The Winds of Winter, but D.B. Weiss and David Benioff wanted to call it quits and move on to other projects. “Dan and Dave were tired, rightfully so,” Haas said. “They were done, and wanted to move on, so they cut it short and then negotiations became, how many seasons can we stretch this out? Because of course HBO wanted more.”
Paul Haas added that George R.R. Martin started to worry about Game of Thrones deviating from the source material after the fifth season. “George loves Dan and Dave, but after season five, he did start to worry about the path they were going because George knows where the story goes,” Haas said. “He started saying, ‘You’re not following my template.’” With The Winds of Winter and the seventh novel still unpublished, we likely have quite some time before we find out just how Martin intends on bringing the story to a close. At least we have House of the Dragon to look forward to?
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