Given the nature of the books (which don’t exactly wrap up storylines neatly), and the fact that at the pace of George RR Martin’s output the ending of the book series may be 10+ years away, is it possible for the television series to play out to a satisfying ending?
Sure. The proposed pace of the show is season 2 = Clash of Kings, 3&4 = Storm of Swords, 5&6 = Feast of Crows/Dance of Dragons mixed together. If books 6 and 7 each get 1 season, that will mean 8 total seasons.
This is HBO, where shows often get a year off before the next season. So odds are good that it’ll be 10+ years before the final season airs. Season 1 was very successful, so there was no hesitation about going into season 2. As long as the momentum keeps up (and they keep sticking to the books, rather than trying to make an anthology about the red hooker from the north), there’s a chance the entire series will be filmed. Fortunately, the children do continue to age in the books, so the actors can keep up.
The thing that worries me is how many non-book readers will keep watching? People are already throwing fits on here over certain characters getting killed who weren’t SUPPOSED to die due to the rules of fiction, which Martin has been famous for ignoring. Also, this isn’t really a series where you can jump in half way or watch a random episode and expect to have a clue as to what is going on. So unless HBO hurries up and gets the Blurays and Netflix streaming out, they’re going to have a hard time picking up any NEW viewers as the series progresses.
… get cancelled in midstream for no reason whatsoever. Witness:
Deadwood
Rome
Carnivale
The 4-book set of ASIOF is currently #1 at Amazon. Some non-book readers might fall by the wayside but others will convert to book-reading fans over the hiatus.
I’m fairly optimistic the HBO series can conclude successfully.
Well, the reason for the first two of those was that they cost too much, so I’m not sure thats really “no reason whatsoever”. Granted GoT also costs a lot, so hopefully they won’t crunch the numbers after the second season and decide its not worth continuing.
So is the next season going to be titled just “Clash of Kings”? Or will they start using
“Song of Ice & Fire” as an umbrella title and the name of the book as a subtitle for the season?
Game of Thrones is the title of the show, not just the first season.
One problem crops up with your theory…If we assume a reasonable 1.5 years between seasons that gives us 6 years before the beginning of season 5. I will assume the actress playing Arya is 11-13 years old now…that puts her at 17-19 at that point…and in the books she is still very much prepubescent in Feast for Crows. This won’t be a problem for the next season, but GRRM’s ideas of multiple seasons for certain books put a real stretch on these kids ages.
They were stretched from day 1. Robb’s supposed to be a 15 year old leading an army into war, not a guy who looks like he has a year of college under his belt.
Does anyone know why, though? It’s not like there wasn’t already a title of the whole book series.
Marketing.
“A Song of Ice and fire” doesn’t really market well and “songs” tend not to be received too well by the core young male audience. Game of Thrones is frankly more accurately descriptive of what the show is about, this said without having read the books.
They grow up quick up North!
As a devotee to the series and to the books I think that they’ll have to find a way to end this before the story moves onto A Feast For Crows simply because that book goes off pretty much at a tangent. It’s also a far weaker book than the others in just about every respect, I’d go as far as to call it tedious and dull.
Depending on how his latest book pans out they could just include a few scenes taken from AFFC in which we learn for the umteenth time that Boiled leather is the no.1 fashion accessory for mail an plate, and the various drinks preferences of the characters, and then (hopefully) we get back on track with the surviving characters and reach some sort of acceptable ending.
Personally I liked Feast for Crows but it certainly moves at a leisurely pace. They will have to rewrite it quite aggressively but there is a core story in there which is interesting. There is also a lot of good detail about the different religions and new places like Braavos and Dorne.
Feast will probably be the best adaptation, just because you don’t need to cut out anything you’d miss in order to make it fit ten episodes.
Except they’ll likely be combining it with ADWD, seeing as they’re contemporaneous.
Yeah I have a feeling that the Feast-Dragons double season is going to lean a lot more heavily on the Dragons than the Feast. Isn’t Dragons always supposed to be even longer than Storm was?