Just a few days after HBO's "Game of Thrones" Season 5 premiere hit our TV screens, showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have discussed their initial struggles of making the mega-hit TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series, while revealing they already "know what the end [of the series] is."
Weiss, 43, and Benioff, 44, shared in a recent interview with Variety that back in 2005, they had successfully convinced the famed author to let them convert his popular "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels into a TV series, after they had correctly answered his question about Jon Snow's parentage.
Yet, GoT's co-creators said they had a rough start when they pitched the TV series to HBO, with the first pilot episode needing to be re-shot. Benioff said they "got everything wrong on a very basic level with the writing," while Weiss shared the experience made them learn "to make decisions more quickly and how to streamline that process."
Since then "Game of Thrones" has become an immensely popular saga that has generated massive ratings and won millions of global fans. Now in its fifth season, the HBO juggernaut is already catching up with the books. Benioff clarified, however, that the current season is mostly "still very much within the books," while admitting it's the next season "that's going to be diverging a bit."
The "Game of Thrones" creators also discussed the series conclusion, confirming that they know how the story will end. "We've got a very definitive idea of how much longer it is, and we're getting there, said Benioff. "We've just started writing episodes for season six. I think we're heading into the home stretch."
"We know what the end is, and we're barreling toward it," Benioff added. "So the idea that we're going to try and stretch it out by an extra couple years just because we're all having a good time doing it and people are making money off it just feels like it would be a betrayal."
Nevertheless, Benioff noted that while they talked to Martin about the ending, "it doesn't mean that that ending that he has currently conceived is going to be the ending when he eventually writes it."
Talks about the TV show's ending may have surprised a lot of fans, especially since Martin is still working on "The Winds of Winter," the sixth installment in his best-selling book series. In a recent interview, the widely celebrated author has expressed his intent to finish the book before "Game of Thrones" Season 6 starts next spring, but he cannot tell exactly when it will finally be released.
Martin skipped working on GoT's fifth season and will not write for the sixth season either to be able to focus on completing "The Winds of Winter," according to media reports.
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