From next season, season six to be exact, Game of Thrones will be surpassing the books it’s based on. The ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ books, written by George RR Martin are currently on the fifth instalment, with number six, The Winds of Winter, and seven, A Dream of Spring, still to be written.
Back in 2014, when season four of the show was still being aired, an article in Entertainment Weekly explained that the showrunners of the TV series, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, were adamant that there would only be seven seasons: “It feels like this is the midpoint for us,” Benioff says. “If we’re going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, season four is right down the middle, the pivot point.”
This naturally caused a bit of confusion and a stir as it showed that the Game of Thrones creators where clearly planning a rushed ending. Something no-one would ever want to happen. It’s usually just over one season per book and Season four only just made it into the forth book of the series. Even Season five, which was released this year, got to about one half to three quarters through the fifth book, ‘A Dance With dragons’. There is still much more it needs to do from it. It would therefore be safe to assume that season six deals with the end of book five and the beginning of book six, so seven seasons seems way too short to complete the whole series.
Fortunately, according to Comingsoon.net, HBO has confirmed in a recent report that it has plans for eight seasons or possibly more – just like we reported in 2013. Although this was highly inevitable, it does give a bit of relief that the series will end properly and not be rushed. The stories are filled with so many back stories, fates, characters and plots that time is definitely needed to bring them all together. It also will hopefully allow time for Game of Thrones to answer all our burning questions, particularly about the origins of a certain long black-haired person in the north that cannot be dead… no I won’t believe it.
Anyway apparently there are also questions asked in the report about a potential spinoff series, possibly a prequel.
HBO programming President Michael Lombardo answered by saying that; “There’s enormous storytelling to be mined in a prequel… If George RR Martin and Dan and David decide they want to tackle that”.
Personally I’d love a prequel. There’s so much back-story to Game of Thrones that could all be good series themselves. If I was to make a guess it would either be Robert’s Rebellion, which is mentioned heavily in the show and is the story of what happened before the events of Game of Thrones, or more than likely Aegon’s Conquest, set some 300 years before Game of Thrones when Lord Aegon of the Valyrian Freehold conquered Westeros and created the seven kingdoms.
Season six of Game of Thrones is set for release sometime in April 2016
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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