Game of Thrones was the biggest show to air on television in the last decade, both in terms of budget and viewership. Making such a great series is no joke, the showrunners and the HBO executives were sceptical if it would even work (because of the botched pilot episode). Game of Thrones’ bosses David Benioff and D.B. Weiss revealed they even had to lie to get the show on track.
In the book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, written by Entertainment Weekly editor James Hibberd, the showrunners, cast and crew reveal interesting details about the show. David and Dan admitted lying to HBO about the show’s content.
The showrunners revealed, “The show was exactly what we told them it wasn’t.” Benioff said, “The lie we told was that the show was ‘contained’ and it was about the characters.”
“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],” Weiss said, “We were banking on them not finding out until it was too late.”
The gamble the duo took eventually worked out, and the biggest-show-ever came into existence. The HBO executives were hesitant at first, having suffered a loss of $100 million in a previous endeavour. Rome, a big-budget period drama about life in the ancient city was cancelled before the second season even aired in 2007 to save money on production resources.
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