If you’ve somehow avoided hearing about them, the internet has been rife lately with a new round of rumors about a Game of Thrones movie. They sounded pretty sketchy right from the start, but just so there’s no ambiguity, George R.R. Martin took to his Not A Blog to debunk them good and proper.
"Lately the rumors have gotten even more specific. The film will be about Robert’s Rebellion. It will be about Dunk & Egg. It will… oh, it’s all too silly.It would still be cool, and I’d still love to see it… but nothing has changed since the last round of rumors. I am still writing THE WINDS OF WINTER. David & Dan are still filming season six. HBO is still in the television business."
Martin does admit, however, that the idea of a movie remains “powerfully attractive” to many people, including writers and directors and actors, but not necessarily to HBO, which lines up with the anti-movie stance outlined by president Michael Lombardo several months back. Martin cautioned people to remember all the other times rumors about movie adaptations of HBO shows didn’t pan out.
"And those of you with long memories may recall all the rumors about a SOPRANOS movie… a ROME movie… a DEADWOOD movie. Rumors is all they were. And that’s all this one is too, at least for now."
We feel obligated to point out that, although those movies never materialized, Entourage got a movie and Sex and the City got two. This latest rumor was over almost as soon as it started, but with Game of Thrones more popular than it’s ever been, you can bet that more will crop up in time.
Martin also made interesting points when responding to comments from readers. For example, here’s what he had to say about the possibility of a Game of Thrones movie set before the events in the show.
"No one is going to make a movie from some entirely different epoch in Westerosi history, with a whole new set of characters.If there ever is a movie, it will be part of the current saga, and will star the actors and characters the audience loves.Now maybe if that one grosses $300 million dollars or so, we can start talking about some of the ideas you’re floating there.But it’s all hugely unlikely."
Speaking as someone who thinks the TV show should stay a TV show and that a movie set during “a different epoch in Westerosi history” would be the way to go on film, it’s disappointed to hear Martin put this so bluntly, but he’s probably right. Martin was a TV insider years before Game of Thrones came on the air, and he knows about the kind of things studios are willing to finance. As cool as it would be to see Rhaenyra and Aegon II Targaryen pit dragon against dragon in a fight for their father’s throne, no one in Hollywood is going to support that without proof that Game of Thrones can sustain itself on the big screen.
Then again, if that happens, there’s no limit to the A Song of Ice and Fire-based movies we could get. For God’s sake, the Harry Potter movies were so successful that Warner Bros. is making a trilogy of spinoff films based on a fake textbook. The Song of Ice and Fire books would give studios a lot more to work with.
Martin also addressed the budgetary issues involved with making a movie. During Season 1, part of the reason Martin wanted a film was because HBO couldn’t provide enough money to tell the story properly on TV (let’s all pause to remember how the producers knocked Tyrion unconscious so they wouldn’t have to film the Battle of the Green Fork). One reader asked if that was still an issue. Martin’s response:
"No, it’s less and less a problem with every year. Did you see “Hardhome?” We could not have done that in season one."
We did see “Hardhome,” and yes, it’s hard to believe that could have been done in Season 1, or 2 or 3 or maybe even 4. From a financial perspective, at least, a Game of Thrones movie that continues the events of the series becomes less necessary all the time.
Next: Game of Thrones filming schedule in Almería takes shape