David Benioff and D.B. Weiss on the future of Westeros

After the colossal Game of Thrones Season 6 finale, fans have been more than eager for the next chapter of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss‘ television epic. Lucky for us, they’ve given a bit of a tease with Deadline.

Originally described as a cross between The Sopranos and Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones continues to be the most ambitious show to air. In Deadline, the creators relish what they enjoy as “great TV” including dramas like The Wire and Deadwood, and animated hits like Rick & Morty and Adventure Time.

A show of such enormity requires tremendous personal sacrifice. Benioff and Weiss delve into their experience with Game of Thrones so far:

As much as we miss our families, which is a lot for those months, production can be the most enjoyable part of the year. The Irish countryside—hills, forests, coasts—is beautiful. Spain’s castles totally make you understand why people were so hellbent on sacking each other’s castles. Turns out castles are really enjoyable places to work. And the glaciers in Iceland are awesome in the serious old-timey sense. There are challenges everywhere… but these are glorious places. People seek these places out just for the privilege of seeing them. Having your job take you to these places… next year we may actually take the kids out of school for a semester and have the families travel with us, so they can all experience it too. Teach them to wield swords. It’s time.

Better keep an eye out for some cameos next season!

The penultimate episode of Season 6 may be the show’s most ambitious and spectacular yet. The two reminisce what it was like behind the scenes of “The Battle of the Bastards.”

When we scheduled that original version, it ended up being 50% more expensive and time-consuming than what we ended up shooting. Which was itself 50% more expensive and time-consuming than what we initially thought we could afford, and we were being generous. So we reconfigured it, with lots of directorial input from Miguel Sapochnik, and chose the battle of Cannae, in which the Carthaginians lured the Romans into an encirclement and massacred an almost unimaginable number of them. We made the body pile the fourth wall of this encirclement.

Being the showrunners of such a mega-hit series would be any A Song of Ice and Fire fan’s dream. The two reflect on the best perks of the job:

The source of the joy and the challenge are the same: the opportunity to tell a story encompassing so many characters and so many places, over such a long stretch of time. To be able to bring a world to life, and actually have it be a world, as in, one with different continents, the one that George bequeathed to us. We try to maintain a strong sense of forward momentum, especially at this late stage in the story.

But even with all that, the scope of the thing gives us time to let characters spend a few minutes with each other here and there without propelling the plot forward.

Now that the show is thinning the herd of main characters left, Benioff and Weiss share their favorite characters to write for.

In the past season or two, things have finally started to contract in a very positive way. It was such an expansive world for such a long time, but things have really started coming together. Obviously, we had to say goodbye to a lot of characters and storylines we loved a lot. The ones that are left are ones we’ve been engaged in so long. Writing for Maisie [Williams] is always great, writing for Peter [Dinklage] and Emilia [Clarke] is great, especially now that they’ve come together in the same storyline. Writing all the stuff for Kit [Harington] and all of the epic stuff he gets to go through now. There isn’t anyone left we don’t love writing for, because we’ve been writing for them for so long. We know them so well at this point.

They also set the board for Season 7 and analyze the stats of our remaining characters.

The Dragon Queen:

Dany has a boundless confidence in herself and her mission in this world. Her sense of destiny makes her a compelling, charismatic leader, a messianic figure for multitudes. She has arguably the cleverest advisor on the planet in Tyrion Lannister. She has three dragons, an army of Unsullied, and a great Dothraki horde.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Lone Lioness:

Cersei will do anything to win. In the past, the only factor limiting her ruthlessness was her love for her children. Now that her children are gone, nothing restrains her. As she herself said, “love is weakness.” A loveless Cersei is a fearsome thing.

Damn straight!

Up in the North, they break down The White Wolf and Night King.

Jon’s honorable nature has proven a disadvantage in some regards: a man who plays by the rules will have a harder time defeating men and women who don’t. But Jon’s nature also provides one of his great strengths: his ability to win others to his cause. The question will be whether an honorable man can overcome dishonorable enemies

Strength: He can raise the dead and have them do his bidding. Weakness: He’ll never be as funny as The Ice King.

The two go further behind the scenes of Season 6 with the return of The Hound, villains Ramsay Bolton and Walder Frey, and Jaime Lannister’s glaring gaze at Cersei with Deadline!

Who will you be rooting for in the endgame of Game of Thrones?

The post David Benioff and D.B. Weiss on the future of Westeros appeared first on Watchers on the Wall.

Via http://watchersonthewall.com