With George R.R. Martin still not finished with the next book in the series, the future of Game of Thrones has been pretty unclear. Now we're hearing from HBO that even though the show will soon be running out of book content, they want the series to run for many more seasons.
Nothing has been set in stone, but up until now we've heard that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were aiming to end around season seven of the series. They at least appear to have the mindset that the story is beginning to wrap up based on recent interviews, saying that they see the light at the end of the tunnel.
However, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo discussed this with Entertainment Weekly, saying he'd like for the show to go on for more than seven seasons, noting that both as an executive and as a fan he'd love for it to get up to season 10.
So that leaves us with the showrunners apparently preferring to end around 2017, and HBO really wanting the show to go on much longer. Considering it's by far their most profitable show at the moment, it's hard to blame them for that. What now? Lombardo said they'll be having discussions about this with Benioff and Weiss, going through all the possibilities. He noted that as horrifying as it would be for him to wrap up the show soon, he wouldn't want the series to continue past the point where the creators feel like they're done with the story, even if that's two years from now.
Would extending the show be a good thing for Game of Thrones? Well, the story is seemingly beginning to wrap up, and the show's next season will be adapting books four and five of a series expected to end at book seven. However, it's important to note that after this season, Game of Thrones will basically be going into uncharted territory. Author George R.R. Martin isn't expected to release the next book in his Song of Ice and Fire series anytime soon, leaving the show in a situation where they're out of material to adapt and have to start inventing content, as we previously reported.
The question then is would Benioff and Weiss be able to invent enough to carry the show for another five years? On the bright side, that would hopefully mean that the next book, The Winds of Winter, would be released before the show wraps up, unless George R.R. Martin is even more behind schedule than we thought. But that also might mean we'd have at least a season of stalling the storyline to drag it out until season 10, and that certainly wouldn't be good. Showrunners Benioff and Weiss have previously said they want to end the show before it starts to go on too long, but would they be able to resist the temptation to do just one or two more seasons?
In terms of extending the Game of Thrones brand, one idea that has been discussed is ending the series with a movie. Lombardo pretty much rejected this idea, saying that he feels it would be sort of a betrayal to HBO subscribers, who pay a certain fee to see Game of Thrones but now would have to shell out $16 to go see the rest of the story. "I feel that on some level [a movie would be] changing the rules," he said.
Game of Thrones returns for its fifth season on April 12.
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