Game Of Thrones bosses David Benioff and DB Weiss proved to have some serious hustle and lied to TV executives to get the show on air.
The showrunners, who stayed with the Westeros fantasy series throughout its seven seasons, were given the opportunity to pitch to HBO who had the fate of the Seven Kingdoms literally in their hands.
So, the pair schemed to make it work, and have now admitted what they did, with Game Of Thrones becoming ‘exactly what we told them it wasn’t’.
Speaking in new book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, which follows the creation of the series, David explained: ‘The lie we told was that the show was “contained” and it was about the characters.’
DB added: ‘We knew most of the people making the decisions were not going to read four thousand pages [of Martin’s books] and get to the dragons getting bigger and the [major battles].
‘We were banking on them not finding out until it was too late.’
Well… it worked, and Game Of Thrones became one of HBO’s most successful series of all time, running from 2011 to 2019.
While the ending might not be exactly what everyone wanted, no one can deny that the show took on a life of its own, and became the world’s most beloved ‘must-watch’ fantasy series.
One of the reasons for their fib stems from a previous HBO series, Rome, a big-budget period drama about life in the ancient city.
It cost the network $100million (£77.7million) and was cancelled before the second season even aired in 2007 to ‘save money on production resources’.
As a result, they were hesitant to invest in another series that had the same period feel.
Game Of Thrones is available on Sky Atlantic and HBO.
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