Game Of Thrones director calls Battle of Winterfell ‘survival horror’

We already know we’re in for a huge battle in the next episode of Game Of Thrones and we’ve accepted that some of our faves are going to die, but it sounds as though the action is going to be just a little bit tougher than we anticipated.

Miguel Sapochnik, the Game Of Thrones director behind the next episode as well as Battle Of The Bastards and The Winds Of Winter, has described episode three as ‘survival horror’.

Lovely.

Speaking to EW, Sapochnik explained how different it was to direct such a huge event compared to his past episodes.

‘I’ve been trying to work out whose story this is. That’s different than the stuff I’ve done previously which was generally from Jon’s perspective,’ he said.

As we saw from the second episode in the season, plenty of characters will be around to play their part in the upcoming battle and with Grey Worm, Ser Jorah, Gendry, Brienne of Tarth, Theon and basically all of the remaining Starks potentially facing death, it’s no wonder Sapochnik struggled with giving everyone their moment.

Thankfully, it sounds like there will be some respite from the violence.

‘One thing I found is the less action — the less fighting — you can have in a sequence, the better. We also switch genres,’ he said.

‘There’s suspense and horror and action and drama and we’re not stuck in killing upon killing because then everybody gets desensitised and it doesn’t mean anything.’

The shoot for the Battle of Winterfell famously took 55 nights to film, after which Kit Harrington said the whole cast were ready to kill each other.

Even though it was ultimately his call, Sapochnik said he wasn’t keen on the idea either: ‘I know it’s 11 weeks of night shoots, I know it’s sh*tty and going to be cold. I don’t want to do 11 weeks of night shoots and no one else does.

‘But if we don’t we’re going we’re going to lose what makes Game Of Thrones cool and that is it feels real’.

The director, who has also worked on episodes of Iron Fist and True Detective, was originally meant to work on season seven and eight of GOT but told show runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss he couldn’t do both.

‘Thankfully, they said season eight,’ he said.

‘It meant I had a year off and got to miss Thrones, which is good, because you don’t miss Thrones as much when you’re on week six of night shoots.’

Fair enough…

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