The Entertainment Weekly recently dropped a huge reveal of the final – or at least something if not anything! It gave us the very the first image from the final season of Game of Thrones with Daenerys Targaryen and her lover ‘Nephew-in-disguise’ Jon Snow featured on the cover of the new edition. A new cover story from the media company gives us a tease of big battles, character reunions, the opening scene, and much more. Let’s get to the details.
Starting off from October 2017 – when all the cast members were called upon for a table read of the scripts of the final season, Kit Harington (Jon Snow) had no idea about what he was just about to experience. According to the EW,
“Benioff and Weiss opened the proceedings by asking the cast to refrain from doing anything during filming or afterward that might reveal even the tiniest spoiler. And then, seated around a long table scattered with a few prop skulls, the cast read aloud the final season of Game of Thrones.”
And, Kit cried “twice” – really feeling bad for him! The filming lasted for ten months or so for the last six episodes of the final season.
Recalling his experience talking to the showrunners on the set of Season 3, the writer of the cover story James Hibbert got to know that they were already thinking about when to end the series. Of course, we do understand that George’s longing of the series lasting for thirteen seasons wasn’t ultimately turned to a reality with restrains like time and budget. David Benioff told Hibbert,
“The lie we told is the show is contained and it’s about the characters…The worlds get so big, the battles get so massive.”
Even Dan Weiss told him,
“It’s what we’re working towards in a perfect world…We end up with an epic fantasy story but with the level of familiarity and investment in the characters that are normally impossible in a two-hour movie…They [HBO] put their money where their mouths are — literally stuffed their mouth full of million-dollar bills, which don’t exist anymore.”
And the Game of Thrones immediately grabbed audience attention and turned so popular that they couldn’t put a halt to it, even if they wanted to. Benioff says,
“We want to stop where we — the people working on it, and the people watching it — both wish it went a little bit longer…There’s the old adage of ‘Always leave them wanting more,’ but also things start to fall apart when you stop wanting to be there. You don’t want to f— it up.”
Moving forward to March 2018, when Hibbert went to the Titanic Studios in Belfast, episode six was being filmed. He was stunned by what he saw and in his own words:
“There are characters in the finale that I did not expect. I gradually begin to piece together what has happened in Westeros over the previous five episodes and try not to look like I’m freaking out. There is absolutely nothing more that can be said about that scene at this time.”
Joseph Dempsie (Gendry) revealed to him:
“There are moments where you don’t trust yourself to have this in your brain…You’re in possession of something millions of people want to know. It’s such a bizarre feeling. And between now and when it comes out, I’m gonna be drunk at some point.”
On the big battles in Season 8, Hibbert reveals one of them had to be filmed for 55 days and these battles don’t have one cut but, rather “intercuts between multiple characters involved in their own survival storylines that each feels like its own genre.” According to Benioff,
“Having the largest battle doesn’t sound very exciting — it actually sounds pretty boring…Part of our challenge, and really, Miguel’s challenge, is how to keep that compelling… we’ve been building toward this since the very beginning, it’s the living against the dead, and you can’t do that in a 12-minute sequence.”
The cover story goes on much longer especially revealing a sneak-peak of the opening scene of the first episode, which we’ve covered in a separate post. You can read the entire cover story here.
Eagerly waiting for the first trailer to drop in order to get further details on the same. What were your thoughts on the cover story of the EW? Tell us in the comments.
