Maybe it’s time to take this “Game of Thrones” movie idea seriously after all.
George R.R. Martin, author of “A Song of Ice and Fire” and the mad man responsible for murdering all of your favorite characters, is very much on the record about his desire to see “Game of Thrones” live past its natural lifespan as an HBO series, and wrap up with a big-budget feature film. He’s said it before, and he just said it again, during an appearance at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival.
“If we go seven or eight seasons and then the show is still big enough that we can get the $200 million to finance a huge epic movie to end it … sure!” he said, according to Screen Daily. “But that doesn’t mean it has been approved. Some people like the idea. Other people don’t like the idea.”
Like the idea or loathe the idea, it’s worth spending some time thinking about why Martin is so on board with a “Game of Thrones” movie.
There’s one obvious explanation: Ending “Thrones” as a feature film buys Martin a little more time to wrap up the books before the live-action adaptation beats him to the punch. As it stands, “Thrones” could very easily catch or outpace Martin as soon as next season. If the author isn’t able to release the sixth book in the series, “The Winds of Winter,” in the next year or two, then “Thrones” will most assuredly be ahead of Martin’s schedule.
Any plan to end “Thrones” after “seven of eight seasons,” followed up with one massive movie finale, lengthens the time in which Martin can write, write, write like the wind. That’s a happy outcome for just about everybody involved.
But beyond that, Martin’s desire for a “Game of Thrones” movie seemingly tells us a lot about how the story will end. During the festival appearance, Martin spoke about how “Thrones” costs millions of dollars to make every season, but “that’s still nothing to what Peter Jackson spends on a ‘Lord Of The Rings’ movie or what any of these big, epic science fiction or fantasy movies have to spend. To go out with something big like that would be amazing.”
Aside from the “Blackwater” and “The Watchers on the Wall” episodes, massive battles and war scenes have never been the beating heart of “Thrones.” It’s the political drama and the unexpected character twists and turns that keep the world of Westeros in constant flux. Why, then, does Martin feel so strongly about having a massive budget for the final strokes of the story?
Maybe it’s because he plans to blow the whole damn thing up.
As Ned Stark so famously warned, winter is coming; we know the White Walkers exist in numbers beyond the Wall, and we know Dany’s dragons are only getting bigger and bigger. It’s only a matter of time before all these forces come to a head, and perhaps a feature film is the only way to do justice to the massive ideas percolating in Martin’s mind.
Many fans want “Thrones” to wrap up as a television series, as it started. I’m one of them. But it’s worth heeding Martin’s desires for a bigger-budget spectacle. If he thinks that a movie is the best way to go out, then maybe it’s wisest to listen to the man who put all this madness in motion to begin with.
Do you agree with Martin in wanting a “Game of Thrones” movie, or should “Thrones” end when the show ends?
Josh Wigler
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