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Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, the first of which is A Game of Thrones.
- List of Game of Thrones Characters
The characters from the medieval fantasy television series...
- List of Game of Thrones Episodes
Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television...
- House of The Dragon
House of the Dragon is an American fantasy drama television...
- Season 1
The first season of the fantasy drama television series Game...
- A Song of Ice and Fire
A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by...
- D. B. Weiss
Weiss was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois.His family is...
- A Clash of Kings
A Clash of Kings is the second of seven planned novels in A...
- Emilia Clarke
Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke MBE (born 23 October...
- List of Game of Thrones Characters
- Overview
- Great Houses
- Cast
- Crew
- Production
- Adaptation process and catching up with the books
"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."
―Cersei Lannister
is the first live-action television series of the World of Westeros. It is the first installment of the franchise overall. It is based on the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, written by George R.R. Martin, who served as a producer, creative consultant and scriptwriter on the television series. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss created the television series and served as executive producers, showrunners and the main writers.
The series consists of eight fully transmitted seasons, comprising seventy-three episodes in total.
Westeros is ruled by nine Great Houses, who in turn command hundreds of lesser vassal houses. Houses Stark, Arryn, Tully, Greyjoy, Lannister, Baratheon, Tyrell, Martell and Targaryen are the nine original Great Houses. Each of the Great Houses rules a large region and commands significant armies and power in their own right. A list of the Great Houses and some of their more significant vassals follows:
•House Arryn of the Eyrie: rulers of the Vale of Arryn and Wardens of the East. Led by Lord Jon Arryn, whose heir is Robin Arryn.
•House Royce of Runestone: vassals of House Arryn who rule over the lands east of the Eyrie. Led by Lord Yohn Royce.
•House Baratheon of Storm's End: rulers of the Stormlands and now the royal house of the Seven Kingdoms. Led by King Robert I Baratheon, whose heir is Joffrey Baratheon.
•House Greyjoy of Pyke: rulers of the Iron Islands off the western coast of Westeros. Led by Lord Balon Greyjoy, whose heir is Theon Greyjoy.
•House Lannister of Casterly Rock: rulers of the Westerlands and Wardens of the West. Led by Lord Tywin Lannister, whose heir is Tyrion Lannister.
House Stark
•Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell. •Michelle Fairley as Lady Catelyn Stark, originally of House Tully. •Richard Madden as Robb Stark, Eddard's eldest son and heir. •Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark, Eddard's eldest daughter. •Maisie Williams as Arya Stark, Eddard's youngest daughter. •Isaac Hempstead-Wright as Bran Stark, Eddard's middle son. •Art Parkinson as Rickon Stark, Eddard's youngest son. •Kit Harington as Jon Snow, Eddard's bastard son by an unknown mother. •Joseph Mawle as Benjen Stark, Eddard's younger brother, First Ranger of the Night's Watch.
House Lannister
•Charles Dance as Lord Tywin Lannister, the widowed patriarch of House Lannister and father of Cersei, Jaime and Tyrion. •Lena Headey as Queen Cersei Lannister, the wife of King Robert, twin sister of Jaime, mother of Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen. •Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Ser Jaime Lannister, a knight of the Kingsguard, twin brother of Cersei. •Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, Cersei and Jaime's younger brother, called the Imp for his size. •Ian Gelder as Ser Kevan Lannister, Lord Tywin's younger brother and closest adviser. •Eugene Simon as Lancel Lannister, Ser Kevan's son, a squire to King Robert. •Karl Davies as Alton Lannister, a distant cousin of the main branch of the family.
House Baratheon
•Mark Addy as King Robert Baratheon, the King of the Andals and the First Men. •Jack Gleeson as Prince Joffrey Baratheon, King Robert's eldest son and heir. •Aimee Richardson (Seasons 1-2)/Nell Tiger Free (Season 5) as Myrcella Baratheon, King Robert's eldest daughter. •Callum Wharry (Seasons 1-2)/Dean-Charles Chapman (Seasons 4-6) as Tommen Baratheon, King Robert's youngest son. •Gethin Anthony as Lord Renly Baratheon, King Robert's youngest brother, Lord of Storm's End. •Stephen Dillane as Lord Stannis Baratheon, King Robert's middle brother, Lord of Dragonstone. •Tara Fitzgerald as Lady Selyse Baratheon, Lord Stannis's wife, originally of House Florent. •Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon, Lord Stannis's daughter and only child.
Producers and staff
•David Benioff: executive producer, showrunner, writer •D.B. Weiss: executive producer, showrunner, writer •George R.R. Martin: co-executive producer, writer •Frank Doelger: executive producer •Carolyn Strauss: executive producer •Bernadette Caulfield: executive producer •David Nutter: executive producer (Season 8) •Miguel Sapochnik: executive producer (Season 8) •Guymon Casady: co-executive producer •Vince Gerardis: co-executive producer •Bryan Cogman: co-executive producer (Seasons 4-8) •Chris Newman: producer (Seasons 3-8) •Greg Spence: producer (Seasons 3-8) •Lisa McAtackney: producer (Seasons 5-8) •Duncan Muggoch: producer (Season 8) •Michele Clapton: costume designer •Deborah Riley: production designer (Seasons 4-8) •Ramin Djawadi: composer •Nina Gold: casting director •Robert Sterne: casting director
Writers
•David Benioff and D.B. Weiss: episodes 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, and 73 •Bryan Cogman: episodes 4, 13, 25, 34, 36, 45, 46, 56, 57, 62, and 69 •Jane Espenson: episode 6 •George R.R. Martin: episodes 8, 19, 27, and 32 •Vanessa Taylor: episodes 14, 16, and 22 •Dave Hill: episodes 44, 52, 65, and 68
Directors
•Thomas McCarthy: pilot (unreleased) •Tim Van Patten: episodes 1 and 2 •Brian Kirk: episodes 3, 4, and 5 •Daniel Minahan: episodes 6, 7, 8, 21, and 22 •Alan Taylor: episodes 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 20, and 66 •Alik Sakharov: episodes 13, 26, 36, and 37. •David Petrarca: episodes 14, and 15 •David Nutter: episodes 16, 17, 29, 30, 49, 50, 68, 69, and 71 •Neil Marshall: episodes 19 and 39 •David Benioff: episodes 23 and 73 •Alex Graves: episodes 24, 25, 32, 33, 38, and 40 •Michelle MacLaren: episodes 27, 28, 34, and 35 •D.B. Weiss: episodes 31 and 73 •Michael Slovis: episodes 41 and 42 •Mark Mylod: episodes 43, 44, 57, 58, 62, and 63 •Jeremy Podeswa: episodes 45, 46, 51, 52, 61, and 67 •Miguel Sapochnik: episodes 47, 48, 59, 60, 70, and 72 •Daniel Sackheim: episodes 53 and 54 •Jack Bender: episodes 55 and 56 •Matt Shakman: episodes 64 and 65
David Benioff was sent a collection of the first four novels in the series (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows) by George R.R. Martin's agent. Initially sceptical of the fantasy genre, Benioff became a big fan of the books and invited his friend D.B. Weiss to develop the project with him for a screen adaptation. They initially considered a movie adaption, but realized this would mean losing most of the plot and characters from the books. Instead, they began working on an adaptation for television. They met with George R.R. Martin and spent several hours discussing the project. Martin was impressed with their enthusiasm and that they had already worked out the resolutions to several key mysteries in the books. He agreed with them that the series was a good fit for the cable company HBO, which Martin was already a big fan of.
HBO agreed to option the project in 2007 and active development of a pilot script began. However, this was delayed by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. In October 2008 HBO exercised its option to buy the rights to the series and ordered a pilot a few weeks later. Casting announcements were made throughout 2009, with Peter Dinklage the first actor formally announced for the series. The pilot was filmed in Northern Ireland and Morocco in October and November 2009.
HBO officially greenlit the series on 2 March 2010. Filming of Season 1 began on 23 July, with Malta replacing Morocco for overseas filming. Several actors from the pilot were recast, requiring the re-filming of most of the first episode. The season wrapped filming on 15 December. HBO later confirmed that the first season had a budget of $60 million. The first season aired on HBO on 17 April-19 June 2011, garnering critical acclaim and steadily rising ratings. HBO confirmed after the transmission of the first episode that a second season had been commissioned.
Production of Season 2 began on 25 July 2011 and wrapped on 12 December. Malta was dropped as a filming location, replaced by Croatia, while additional filming took place in Iceland. The budget for Season 2 was 15% higher than Season 1, necessitated by the addition more ambitious effects sequences and the use of CGI creatures such as direwolves and dragons. The second season aired from 1 April to 3 June 2012, garnering additional critical acclaim and increased ratings. By the end of the second season, the show had become the third-most-successful series in HBO's history, behind only The Sopranos and True Blood. In addition, the DVD and Blu-ray set of Season 1 was released just prior to transmission of Season 2 and immediately became HBO's fastest-selling media release in its history.
Production of Season 3 began on 10 July 2012 and wrapped on 24 November. Morocco was added to the filming roster alongside Croatia, Iceland and Northern Ireland, with the complexities of filming requiring the addition of a third filming unit to the existing two. An additional scene was shot in Los Angeles for safety reasons, meaning that Season 3 was filmed in five separate countries on three continents. The season aired from 31 March to 2 June 2013. The penultimate episode The Rains of Castamere won widespread critical acclaim for its shock twist ending. By the end of the season the show had supplanted True Blood as the second-most successful HBO show in the United States and The Sopranos as its most successful series worldwide.
Production of Season 4 began on 8 July 2013 and concluded on 21 November. Production was more focused this season, with only two units used and filming restricted to Northern Ireland, Iceland and Croatia. This was to allow more of the budget to be concentrated on several major action and effects sequences late in the season.
Seasons 1-4: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords
As of 2016, five books have been published in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and author George R.R. Martin has predicted that there will be two more (though he is struggling not to let the final book run long, in which case it would have to be split, for a total of eight books). The third novel, A Storm of Swords, was so long that it pushed the limits of how large a published book could physically be without pages falling out. Because the third novel was so long, the production team realized it would be impossible to condense it all into a single season, so the decision was made to adapt its contents across two seasons. While Season 3 ends with the Red Wedding, this actually happened in the middle of the third novel (similar to how Renly Baratheon suddenly died in the middle of Season 2). Jon Snow returned to Castle Black by the middle of the third novel. Daenerys Targaryen had not yet reached Meereen by the middle of the third novel. A few characters did advance further than this in Season 3, i.e. Bran Stark actually passed north of the Wall at the end of the third novel (he had so few chapters in the entire book that the TV producers didn't want to space it out for two full seasons). By the end of the fourth season, most of the characters had completed their story from the third novel.
Season 5 and 6: Intercutting A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons
What was originally planned as the fourth novel was even longer than the third novel, so Martin split it into two novels: A Feast for Crows (the fourth book) and A Dance with Dragons (the fifth book). The fourth and fifth books occur during a simultaneous timeframe: all of the chapters set in the Seven Kingdoms were moved to the fourth book, while all chapters set outside of the Seven Kingdoms (at the Wall or across the Narrow Sea in Essos) were moved to the fifth book. Though of course, despite splitting them because as one book they would have been longer than the third novel, Martin kept making additions to the fourth and fifth novels during the writing process, so both are nearly as long as the third novel. It would be odd to spend an entire season with one set of characters while the rest do not appear, then reverse this in the subsequent season. So Season 5 chronologically presented events in the order that they happened. This is comparable to how J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers actually consisted of two halves: the first half entirely follows Aragorn since the end of the first novel, then the second half backs up in time to follow only Frodo's perspective, but during the same timeframe since the end of the first novel. Peter Jackson's movie adaptation, however, chose to simply intercut between the two storylines to show events in the chronological order in which they occurred. Thus "Season 5" consisted of the majority of the material from A Feast for Crows and
Seasons 7 and 8: Beyond the books and ending
Given that there are currently five novels (with the third split into two seasons), but given the fact that the majority of the fourth and fifth novels have been adapted in Seasons 5 and 6, there was only a very limited amount of material left to be adapted. Even so, Martin has told producers Benioff & Weiss the general outline of how the final two books are going to progress (so if a bolt of lightning strikes Martin, they'd still be able to finish according to Martin's general plan). As a result, the total amount of seasons remained unclear for quite some time. During Season 3, in an interview with Mother Jones magazine, Benioff & Weiss said that they thought the TV series might run as many as eight seasons, for a total of 80 episodes, though they were unsure: : "So I gather that Game of Thrones could last eight or nine seasons. Does that mean putting novel writing on hold for a decade? Benioff & Weiss: "Yes, if we live that long and HBO keeps wanting to make the show. We have the opportunity here to tell a coherent story that lasts for 80 hours. And while a canvas of that size presents all sorts of storytelling problems, it also allows us to spend more time with these characters we love than we'll ever get again. Soon before Season 4 began, however, in early March 2014 executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss made several comments that they actually felt Season 4 was the "midway point" of the TV series, which would probably last seven seasons. On March 11, 2014, they said in Entertainment Weekly: "It feels like this is the midpoint for us...If we’re going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, Season 4 is right down the middle, the pivot point...I would say it's the goal we've had from the beginning...It was our unstated goal, because to start on a show and say your goal is seven seasons is the height of lunacy. Once we got to the point where we felt like we're going to be able to tell this tale to its conclusion, that became [an even clearer] goal. Seven gods, seven kingdoms, seven seasons. It feels right to us.” The repeated statements Benioff and Weiss made throughout Season 4 that they "always" intended for there to be seven seasons simply contradict previous statements they made in formal print interviews, such as with Mother Jones in 2013 (though plans can and do change over many years). Benioff & Weiss, as well as George R.R. Martin himself, then provided comments for the April 2014 issue of Vanity Fair (which was released about two weeks after Benioff and Weiss said in Entertainment Weekly that there might be only seven seasons). Contradicting his statements made at the same time in EW that "we're going for seven seasons, it's been our goal since the beginning", Benioff instead repeated that the production team wasn't sure if the TV series would last "seven or eight" seasons. "If we're a series and we're four seasons, five seasons in, and it's indefinite as to how long it's gonna go, then I don't think there’s as much pressure as far as, the end is coming, the end is nigh. So, for us, whether it ends up being seven or eight, it's right around there. I think we've always felt — we just completed the fourth season — this is the midpoint. And we're coming around the bend right now." D.B. Weiss also said in Vanity Fair, after they had just finished Season 4 and were about to start writing Season 5, that they saw the show as running up to eight seasons: "We know there’s an end somewhere in the seven-or-eight season zone. It’s not something that goes ten, eleven — it doesn't just keep on going because it can. I think the desire to milk more out of it is what would eventually kill it, if we gave in to that. HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said that the network would eagerly accept the TV series going on for eight to ten seasons, but only if writers Benioff and Weiss felt it served the story instead of dragging it out (though of course, the TV series has not been "padding" the massive novels series, but omitting many subplots for time). Lombardo said: "We'll have an honest conversation that explores all possible avenues. If they [Benioff and Weiss] weren't comfortable going beyond seven seasons, I trust them implicitly and trust that's the right decision—as horrifying as that is to me. What I'm not going to do is have a show continue past where the creators believe where they feel they've finished with the story. On July 30, 2015, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo announced that the TV series will last at least eight seasons, not only seven. Speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour, Lombardo said that while Season 7 was not yet technically ordered, HBO and the writing team felt that there were about two more seasons worth of story (matching the expectation that it is based on a series of seven novels, one of which was so large it was split and adapted as two TV seasons). In contrast with Benioff and Weiss's frequent declarations since Season 4 that they had "always" intended for there to be seven TV seasons (though they had repeatedly said "seven or eight" before Season 4), Lombardo said that "Seven-seasons-and-out has never been the [internal] conversation" between the production team and HBO. Lombardo said, "The question is: How much beyond seven are we going to do? Obviously we’re shooting six now, hopefully discussing seven. [Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are] feel like there’s two more years after six. I would always love for them to change their minds, but that’s what we’re looking at right now." Lombardo also directly reiterated that HBO is interested in making prequel projects, adapted from Martin's other stories set in Westeros, i.e. the Dunk & Egg novellas - but he also reiterated that they aren't going to have any serious negotiations about prequel projects until after the main TV series is over, due to the massive amount of work involved. On April 14, 2016, David Benioff confirmed they had 13 episodes left after season six. "We’re heading into the final lap," he said. "That's the guess, though nothing is yet set in stone, but that's what we're looking at." Presumably, season seven would have that number of episodes, and season eight would be six episodes. Weiss and Benioff said they were unable continuing to produce ten episodes of the show in the previous 12 to 14-month time frame. "It's crossing out of a television schedule into more of a mid-range movie schedule," Weiss said. Martin declined writing an episode for Season 5 and beyond to focus on writing The Winds of Winter, and in March 2015 canceled all of his future convention appearances to focus on writing it. Nevertheless, the final seasons of the TV series were released before the final two novels, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.
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" Valar Morghulis " [3] is the tenth and final episode of the second season of Game of Thrones. It is the twentieth episode of the series overall. It premiered on June 3, 2012 on HBO. It was written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and directed by Alan Taylor. Contents. 1 Premise. 2 Synopsis. 2.1 In King's Landing. 2.2 On Dragonstone.
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Set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, where "summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime," Game of Thrones chronicles the violent dynastic struggles among the kingdom's seven noble families for control of the Iron Throne; as the series opens, additional threats from the snow and ice covered region north of Westeros and from the eastern...
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