Game of Thrones showrunning dynamic duo David Benioff and Dan Weiss sat down with Variety for a lengthy interview about Season 6. Things kicked off with the pair talking about Jon Snow’s death and the fans’ reaction to it, because what else would there be to talk about? Benioff talked about fans desperately trying anything to disprove Jon Snow’s permanent death, including examining his eyes:
People are spending a lot of time looking at his eyes, thinking he’s not dead. We spent a lot of time …
Weiss interjected:
…We spent a lot of money on his eyes.
JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT
Those comments make me wonder just how much thought the showrunners put into keeping the public on their toes. They clearly did their research when it came to how Jon Snow’s eyes would look post-stabbing, not that that stopped people from developing theories about them.
However, as Variety points out, there’s a lot more on the line for Benioff and Weiss than Jon Snow’s potential resurrection. Season 6 will be the first time the duo have plotted out a year of television without a guide—in the form of a book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series—from George R.R. Martin.
This is us carrying the story forward from the end point of the final book. That was both very exciting and a bit terrifying at times.
HBO has a lot riding on the show, too. Game of Thrones has become the network’s flagship program, and with the possibility that Seasons 7 and Season 8 will be shortened in some way, it needs another show to step into Thrones‘ slot. HBO programming president Michael Lombardo chimed in on the topic:
We do believe that every show we put on needs to aspire to its own greatness. It’s nice to have a show [like ‘Game of Thrones’] that hits this kind of zeitgeist of popular culture. At the same time, it’s really just one piece of a bigger tapestry for us, and I never lose sight of that.
This anxiety may be may we’ve been hearing about the potential of Game of Thrones spin-offs lately, although Lombardo reiterated that there are no plans for one at this time. “I can’t imagine, if it were not driven by [Benioff and Weiss], that that would happen,” he said. George R.R. Martin has a few ideas in that regard, so perhaps he and Lombardo should get on the same page.
Back to Season 6, Benioff described it as the strongest year of the show to date, but called the production “brutal.” According to Variety, Season 6 had almost 700 hours of dailies (compared to 500 last season), which were filmed across five countries. Sometimes, they would simultaneously employ three, and even four, filming units. “It became a real endurance test for everyone on the crew,” Benioff said. Yes, “brutal” is apropos.
As far as marketing for Season 6 goes, Lombardo defends the use of Jon Snow’s bloody face on the first poster. He stands fast that HBO was not trolling fans, but trying to engage with them on a question about which they were obviously interested.
The noise, the volume, the frequency with which the Jon Snow question was being asked, and the response to his death in season five was so palpable, to ignore that seemed somehow silly. I don’t think it was an attempt to play with the audience as much as to remind an audience of where we took them this season and the stakes of the next season.
Or is it more likely that HBO wanted to capitalize on the Jon Snow frenzy that has gripped the internet since the Season 5 finale? Whatever happens to Jon in Game of Thrones Season 6, it appears from all the trailers and officially released photos that this will be the most exciting and potentially violent season yet…and I, for one, cannot wait for Sunday evening.
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/04/19/benioff-and-weiss-game-of-thrones-season-6-is-most-brutal-yet/
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