Alan Taylor cut off Ned Stark’s head on Game of Thrones, but he doesn’t see a big screen future for the franchise, in part because…how does it get bigger?
Alan Taylor is TV directing royalty. Over the course of his career, he’s directed episodes of Six Feet Under, Oz, The West Wing, Lost, Rome, Deadwood, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Sex and the City andThe Sopranos — he also directed the new Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark, which opens in theaters and on HBO Max on October 1.
But to Game of Thrones fans, Taylor will always be the guy who cut off Ned Stark’s head in “Baelor.” He directed several other episodes of the show, including big ones like “Fire and Blood,” “Valar Morghulis” and “Beyond the Wall.”
As someone who’s seen several of the series he worked on make the jump to the big screen — he almost directed the Deadwood movie as well as The Sopranos film — does Taylo think Game of Thrones could ever follow suit? “Certainly, there could be a Game Of Thrones movie,” the director told JOE, “but in a way there was already a Game Of Thrones movie because the show was so big, so I’m not sure the jump to the big screen would be that different.”
He’s got a point there: when your TV show has scenes that look like this, what exactly is a big screen budget going to help with?
Plus, with a Game of Thrones spinoff already on the way (and potentially several more in development), I dunno if the franchise needs movies when TV is working so well for it. Instead, Taylor would adapt something with less of a pedigree. “I’ll have to think of something more off-kilter, like a Bored To Death movie,” he said of the three-season series where a trio of friends (Jason Schwartzmann, Ted Danson, Zack Galifiankis) combined forces to solve mysteries. “I did the pilot to Bored To Death and that was a very unique tone and I just loved everything about it. So it would be hilarious to see that done as a movie.”
House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spinoff, comes out sometime next year. Then we’ll see what happens.
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