19 Things That Almost Completely Changed Game Of Thrones
19. It Could Have Been A Film
George Martin has freely admitted that he wrote Game Of Thrones as expansively as he liked almost as a conscious f-you to his TV script-writing work:
"My scripts were always too long, they were always too expensive. I was always having to cut them. So when I went back to books, I said, 'I don't care about any of that any more. I'm going to write a story that's going to be as gigantic a story as I want. I'm going to have hundreds of characters, gigantic battles, magnificent castles and vistas -- all the things I couldn't do in television.'"
Inevitably, once the books started to sell though, Hollywood came sniffing around, but thankfully Martin didn't believe anyone could adapt his work properly:
"We got a number of inquiries and basically, I told my agents, no, because I didnt see how they could possibly be done as a feature film."
He also believed the books wouldn't work as a TV show, thanks to his experiences working in the industry:
"I knew that the limitations of budgets and the censorship limitations. I know its loosened up some since I was active in the 80s and 90s, but I can still remember the fights with Standards and Practices and censors about the sex and violence. And the books are full of sex and violence. I didnt want some watered-down, bowdlerized version of this."
Was It A Good Change? Are you kidding? Imagine attempting to condense everything that happens in the books to date into a series of films: it would have led to ridiculous cuts of beloved material and the long-form approach helps with character development far better.
