Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-5014364-20150731235713

'HBO programming president Michael Lombardo announced at the Television Critics Association's press tour on July 30th that Game of Thrones'' will last through Season 8. '''

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/30/game-thrones-eight-seasons

He also reiterated quite clearly that HBO is interested in adapting prequel series (such as the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas) but this is just expressed interest at this point; no serious negotiations will even be begun until the main series is over - the massive workload means they cannot possibly run two series at once.

Thus "the HBO live-action Westeros franchise continuity" which this wiki serves will keep going at least another three years, and probably extend into prequel series beyond that. We'll be here a while.

George R.R. Martin projected that the A Song of Ice and Fire book series will total seven novels when it is finished (five have been published so far). The third novel, A Storm of Swords, was so massively long that the TV production team decided to split it in half and adapt it as two seasons' worth of storyline, Season 3 and Season 4.

For a seven book series, splitting one book in half led to the assumption in earlier seasons that there would therefore ultimately be eight seasons, to maintain the general rule that no more than one book could be adapted per season.

For unclear reasons, Season 5 was adapted both the fourth and fifth novels into one TV season, leading to drastic condensations, such as:


 * Sansa Stark remains in The Vale helping Littlefinger increase his grip on the local lords - she never returns to Winterfell and never even meets the Boltons, much less marries Ramsay Bolton.
 * The Dorne subplot with House Martel was drastically condensed (most major professional critical reviews - such as IGN's Dragons on the Wall, which appears in this wiki's sidebars - assessed that the Dorne subplot seemed squeezed into the season, and to suffer from lack of screentime needed to fully develop all of the characters, as well as limited writing/camera direction attention).
 * All of Stannis Baratheon's storyline after he left The Wall was drastically condensed; a major storyarc was his entire campaign in the North, winning Northern Houses to his side, until his final march against Winterfell seems to be a serious threat to the Boltons at the end of the fifth novel. His daughter Shireen was not burned at the stake and is still alive at the end of the fifth novel - while it was said she would be burned in an upcoming novel (apparently in the war against the White Walkers), the context of her death was drastically changed, greatly altering the motivations and meaning of the scene.
 * House Greyjoy and the Iron Islands don't appear much in the third novel, after being focused on so much in book two/Season 2, which resulted in them barely appearing as a political faction in Seasons 3 and 4. The ironborn do get a major new subplot starting in the fourth novel...but instead they were omitted entirely from Season 5 (discounting Theon, the "ironborn as a political faction" and specifically Balon Greyjoy and Yara Greyjoy did not appear at all.  The end result is that the Greyjoys have barely appeared in the TV series since Season 2 (though casting reports from Season 6 indicate that their large new subplot will be included, it was not omitted but pushed back to next season).
 * Several other major subplots were not even introduced (though to discuss them would introduce massive spoilers).

The TV writers Benioff and Weiss are on-record back in the earlier seasons saying they weren't sure if they would even get renewed through Season 3, but that by splitting the third novel into two seasons, they projected that the series would run "about seven to eight" seasons. In Season 4, they began emphatically claiming that "we always said seven seasons" - even though there was clear evidence that this isn't what they "always" said. The reason behind these sudden claims is unclear.

IGN's Dragons on the Wall video reviews, which are cross-linked in this wiki's sidebars, shared the view that drastically condensing two novels' worth of material into a single TV season negatively affected the series, particularly the subplots listed above.
 * IGN: "Season 5 finale good but not great"

Interestingly, in this announcement, Lombardo remarked that there was never serious internal discussion for the show to last only 7 seasons.

It is possible that the actor contract negotiations which took place leading up to Season 5 made the writers pursue a "worst case scenario" mode, that they might only get seven seasons and had to condense the plotlines (though they said that they knew they were going to condense the Sansa and Bolton storylines since early Season 2). However, this cannot be confirmed as the reason why Season 5 was so heavily condensed.

This announcement means that the TV series can return to the formula of "one book equals one TV season" - more or less, as due to pacing issues some subplots were always brought up or pushed back to present them clearly. While it may seem that there are now three seasons left to cover two (unpublished) novels' worth of storyline, they are all very long novels. Moreover, reports indicate that several subplots from the fourth and fifth novels which were omitted when Season 5 aired actually will appear, simply pushed back to Season 6. These include:


 * Samwell Tarly and Gilly's journey to Oldtown in The Reach.
 * A few more chapters about the now-blind Arya Stark (Arya doesn't kill Meryn Trant in the most recent novel - this is based on a preview chapter from the unpublished sixth novel. She also kills a different Lannister henchman on her kill-list named Raff, but he was condensed with Meryn in the TV series).  Therefore not all of Arya's remaining chapters from books 4 and 5 were used, to make room for this book 6 material that was moved up.
 * The entire, major House Greyjoy subplot which extended across both the fourth and fifth novels hasn't been included at all. Casting reports now strongly indicate it will now appear in Season 6.
 * Most of the Dorne subplot was drastically condensed, to the point that a large amount of written material remains untapped. The TV version didn't even introduce all of Doran Martell's three children - though the other two probably don't exist in the TV continuity - but will a Season 8 extension mean that the series now has time to introduce Doran's eldest child and heir, his daughter Arianne Martell?
 * Subplots in The Riverlands that check back in on House Frey and House Tully (not seen in the TV series since the Red Wedding at the end of Season 3), in which the remaining Tully garrison at Riverrun has been hopelessly besieged by the Freys this entire time but refuses to submit to the Lannisters. Also, emphasizing that the War of the Five Kings has completely gutted the Riverlands, and the entire region has devolved into chaos, even as winter is setting in.
 * Tyrion had a major subplot in the Free Cities which was skipped entirely (though skipped in such a way that his TV storyline in Season 5 could exist in isolation from it).

So, great news.

Your thoughts? Is extending "the ending" from Season 7 to Season 8 making it "too long"? I've never understood that mentality - why wouldn't we want more show? Why would we rush to make it stop? Similarly, do you feel that Season 5 was too rushed, and that settling back into a goal of eight and not seven seasons is a step back in the right direction? 