The final season of Game Of Thrones is infamous for not exactly turning out in the way that fans had hoped for.
And it turns out the behind-the-scenes team didn’t exactly get what they wanted, either.
In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, creators of the Thrones TV series, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, revealed that they’d originally wanted to end the story with a trilogy of epic films to be released in cinemas, but US broadcaster HBO apparently slammed the brakes on this idea pretty quickly.
According to Weiss, the HBO execs were keen to remind the creatives that they were making content for “Home Box Office”, rather than “Away Box Office”.
These three films were then turned into Game Of Thrones’ polarising seventh and eighth seasons, both of which were shorter than their predecessors.
Meanwhile, in the same interview, Benioff and Weiss revealed that higher-ups at AT&T, which was HBO’s parent company during Game Of Thrones’ run, tried to persuade the duo film episodes “vertically”, to prioritise viewers watching on their mobile phones.
“The company also openly discussed the idea of snackable mini-episodes of the series,” the Wall Street Journal claimed.
Game Of Thrones eventually ended in 2019, with its final batch of episodes being critically mauled by fans – as well as certain members of the cast.
Since then, spin-off prequel House Of The Dragon has also debuted, though thankfully this was much better received.
A second season of House Of The Dragon is set to air later this year, with Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin teasing various other spin-offs in a blog post last year.