A frequent topic of conversation among Game of Thrones fans is the differences between author George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's fantasy series. We update our Wiki each week noting the alterations, in fact. But how and why did these, initially minor, changes begin?
Game of Thrones, particularly in its first season, actually stays remarkably close to the source material. Often times shows will begin in line with the source and then veer into their own direction. Game of Thrones has begun to take more liberties in terms of certain character names/origins, and the sequence of events, but the major plotpoints, thus far, have remained remarkably close to those in the novels (with a couple of notable exceptions). Series co-creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have a great respect for Martin's work and wanted to honor it as best they could. Sometimes the realities of the needs of a different medium come into play, though.
Weiss and Benioff recently participated in an extended interview with Elvis Mitchell, host of KCRW’s The Treatment. If you're a fan of the series, I highly recommend checking out the full interview. One thing they discussed was how the pair began to imagine the fascinating character moments in the show that are not found in the book. As it turns out, they were low on time and out of money.
The way Benioff and Weiss tell it, they found that, in part due to their inexperience in television, several episodes in the later part of their first season were projected to run at under an hour, in one case 39 minutes. The producers had run out of money for any elaborate sequences (which is why the big Tyrion battle sequence was cut in Season 1), and they needed to come up with 93 pages to fill in the gaps. So they began to imagine conversations that had not taken place in the novel in order to fill out some of the shorter episodes.
They asked themselves: "'What if Cersei and Robert were alone talking? What would that be like? They're married, they must spend some time together even as much as they hate each other. What about Robert and Jamie? What would they say?" Some of these imagined conversations became some of the most beloved series moments. Then later, in Season 2, Benioff and Weiss simply wanted to see certain characters, most notably Arya and Tywin, go toe-to-toe. These show-specific interactions, again, yielded incredible results. So there you have it, as they say, necessity was the mother of invention.
To listen to this truly fascinating full interview head over to KCRW.
Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.
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