There are “10-15 more hours” of Game of Thrones beyond Season 6

Game of Thrones showrunner David Benioff sat down with his father, former Goldman Sachs chairman Stephen Friedman, to talk about the show, his early life, his partnership with Dan Weiss, and quite a bit more in a lengthy interview.

The fact that Benioff is being questioned by his father gives this video an interesting gimmick. Some of the stuff in here is old news—like the story about how Benioff and Weiss convinced George R.R. Martin to give them the rights to adapt his series—but I enjoyed getting the kind of insight into Benioff’s childhood only his father could provide, and he did comment on the show’s continual divergences from the books.

"[Season 6] was by far the hardest season we’ve done…starting with the writing. We’ve always been adapting the books before, and even as we’ve started to diverge from George’s narrative in places we’ve had these great set pieces to go back to. So Season 5 was probably the most divergent from the novels, but we still had, for instance, the Walk of Atonement…and we knew were heading towards that. This time, for the first time, Season 6 is almost entirely beyond the books with a couple of small exceptions, so it was a much tougher season to plan…It’s a tricky path to try to keep faith with the spirit of George’s novels even though we don’t have them at this point to adapt."

I’m curious about pretty much everything he says here, from which “small exceptions” are included in Season 6 to where they take the story now that they’re off the beaten path. As Friedman points out early on, Benioff has said that Season 6 is the season he’s proudest of, and I’m eager to see what he has to be proud of.

Also, he drops a little hint about an unspecified scene around 9:48. “I think it’s the greatest horse battle I’ve seen onscreen.” Interesting.

Finally, Benioff commented on the end of the show. “We’ll have two more seasons after [Season 6]. Season 8 will be the concluding one.” We’re still not sure how long those final two seasons will be, but that’s nice and final.

Benioff and Weiss followed up on these comments in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where they said that they are “writing the final act now.” “[W]e’re looking at somewhere between 70 and 75 hours before the credits roll for the last time,” they said.

"The show has diverged from the books quite dramatically by this point, but it’s still George’s world: The characters he’s dreamt up in the world he created. At this point, given the fact that we’re outpacing the novels, we all see the upside in the divergence: book readers won’t be spoiled by what’s to come on the show, and the show audience won’t have to worry about spoilers from the unpublished books. And we’re very happy that the show has led so many people to discover George’s amazing books."

Moving onto other crew members, Dothraki creator David J. Peterson joined host Alexandra August and cohost Johnny Kolasinski on the GoT Thrones podcast, where he talked about everything from his early life, to creating fake languages for the show, to a few vague hints about what’s coming in Game of Thrones Season 6. Listen to the full podcast here, and check out some highlights below.

• Around 21:00, Peterson describes the crazy spoiler lockdown the show has initiated for Season 6. In one instance, he was given a few pages of dialogue to translate, but wasn’t told which character was saying the dialogue. It’s on lockdown, people.
• This isn’t Game of Thrones-related, but Peterson has some interesting insights into the dark underbelly of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Peterson designed the basic outlines for the language of Asshai for that scene where Mirri Maz Duur is in the Dothraki tent, but the show didn’t use it.
• Also, Peterson confirms the correct pronunciation of “R’hllor” around 55:00.