News culture “Adapting to the phone”: the Game of Thrones series could have ended in the cinema with a trilogy, but they had other plans in mind

Culture news “Adapting to the phone”: the Game of Thrones series could have ended in cinema with a trilogy, but they had other plans in mind

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Game of Thrones could have ended up on the big screen…

If you followed Game Of Thrones at the time of its broadcast between 2011 and 2019, you surely have a somewhat complicated relationship with this series. A true monument of television entertainment which dominated the market for almost an entire decade, its success was ultimately as impressive as its fall due to the last season considered disastrous by a very large part of the public. While many viewers would have liked a few more episodes, or even an entire season (and HBO also seemed on that wavelength at the time), the Game of Thrones creators recently revealed that they would have liked to condense the two final seasons into a trilogy of films.

In an interview given to Wall Street Journal a few days ago, showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss have indeed confirmed that they had asked HBO to end the series by exporting to the cinema. Instead of the last 13 episodes which correspond to seasons 7 and 8, the two directors would have preferred to end with no less than three films broadcast in theaters. However, HBO executives didn’t really agree, believing that the channel had never intended to go beyond the small screen (HBO also stands for Home Box Office, which could almost be translated as “Cinema at home”). A project that we could almost regret before realizing that even assuming that the films in question would last at least 2h30 each (which is not even certain), that would only make 7h30 of content compared to almost 2 p.m. for the last two seasons. While spectators felt that a good season was still missing to properly conclude this series, the result could therefore have been even worse… But the real surprise in all this is that ending up in the cinema wouldn’t even have been the worst possible fate for Game of Thrones.

…or on a very small

At the time when Game of Thrones was broadcast on HBO in the 2010s, it should be remembered that the American channel was owned by another company: the mobile network provider AT&T. As such, AT&T executives also had their say on how to distribute big productions like Game of Thrones, and suffice to say that their ideas were not really in line with those of the creators of the series. Indeed, still in the same interview given to the Wall Street Journal, The Game of Thrones showrunners have revealed that executives at AT&T have already approached them to try to convince them to film the series vertically to “fit the phone”. On top of that, they also wanted Game of Thrones to be watchable as a “mini-episodes”. A very different vision from that of DB Weiss and David Benioff who dreamed of the big screen. This is partly why they chose to turn to Netflix for their new series, not wanting to work for a company owned by another:

When you sign a five-year agreement with a company, you want it to be stable so you can work peacefully without having to worry about a mobile phone company buying it. Finding the quietest river on earth was fundamental.

If we can understand the showrunners’ desire for stability, it’s difficult not to smile at the choice they made. Given the growing share of Netflix users who watch their content on mobile devices, they would not be immune to a demand similar to that of AT&T one day or another. Obviously, we hope they never have to film vertically for such cinematographic projects. As a reminder, you will very soon be able to discover the new series by DB Weiss and David Benioff on Netflix since The 3-Body Problem arrives on March 21 on the SVOD service.