# So why didn't they milk out Game of Thrones one more season? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** soda-softdrinks\ **Created:** [May 23, 2019, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404 "2019-05-23T13:26:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/41 "2019-05-24T15:37:22Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > > > What HBO wants, more than anything, is to be seen as, in the words of an old NBC slogan, Must See Television. They want the show that everyone is talking about at the water cooler on Monday morning and that people feel they need to subscribe to HBO so they can watch. They don’t just want your fifteen bucks for the month but want you to subscribe all year round. HBO in fact stopped broadcasting boxing matches because their research showed people don’t subscribe on the basis of being able to watch boxing matches. > > Mmm. I’d disagree, sort of. > > What HBO wants is a merchandising machine. GOT inspired a lot of merchandising. Figurines, books about the series, artwork, whatever. That’s where the real money is on something like that. > > If HBO is going to drop that much money producing something they’ve got to get a multi-quadrant return on that investment. I don’t agree. GoT was unusual among HBO series in that there was merchandise tied to it. That wasn’t the case for The Sopranos or Westworld or Six Feet Under or anything else. Really the only sustainable business model for HBO is the subscribers. (That may change somewhat now that AT&T is in charge. I think I heard an AT&T exec say to HBO management that they need to vastly expand the number of shows produced so there’s lots of content for people to stream (better to compete with Netflix) and even to make shows in twenty-minute segments so that people can watch them on their smartphones when and where they want. That’s quite a change from the present Sunday night new program model.) ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/42 "2019-05-24T15:45:13Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > I really liked New Amsterdam but I think only 3 of us watched it. There are dozens of us! Also, I had no idea it was Jaime. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Burden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/958977/32.png) [@Jack\_Burden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Burden)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/43 "2019-05-24T16:10:41Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > Trouble with Jamie is that he’s one of the nordic clones: blonde hair, sometimes bearded, square faced, and when they appear on something I struggle to work out if its Jamie, Sawyer from Lost, Eric from True Blood or Aaron Eckheart 20 years ago. > > And I’m sure there’s about three more I’ve forgotten. I’d never heard of Viggo Mortensen before the LOTR films either, but he’s become recognizable with a nice run of roles. Though maybe Jon Snow tracks closer to Aragorn and Jamie closer to Boromir, which brings us back as these conversations inevitably do to Sean Bean. The Prince Who Was Promised … To Die In The First Act. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/44 "2019-05-24T16:37:01Z")
I also didn’t realize Richard Madden was in _Rocketman._ Up until this point I thought it was Oscar Isaac. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/45 "2019-05-24T17:30:31Z")
You mean that Sopranos 9 mm handgun I bought was not HBO authorized? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/46 "2019-05-24T17:40:51Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Right now they are coasting on their GoT popularity, but Emilia already bombed with Terminator and Star Wars, and the word of mouth on the new X-Men movie is pretty terrible. The Terminator and Star Wars movies she had lead roles in were both massive commercial successes, so I’m not sure how you can say she bombed. I thought she was pretty good in both movies, although certainly opinions can differ. It does look like they’re going a different route for the next Terminator movie (aside: back to badass Linda Hamilton _and_ adding badass MacKenzie Davis! I’m in!), and I guess it remains to be seen if they’ll write her out of future Han Solo prequel action. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/47 "2019-05-24T17:50:11Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The Terminator and Star Wars movies she had lead roles in were both massive commercial successes, so I’m not sure how you can say she bombed. I thought she was pretty good in both movies, although certainly opinions can differ. > > It does look like they’re going a different route for the next Terminator movie (aside: back to badass Linda Hamilton _and_ adding badass MacKenzie Davis! I’m in!), and I guess it remains to be seen if they’ll write her out of future Han Solo prequel action. They canceled any other Han Solo prequels. I thought it was great and she was great on it, but it massively under performed. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/48 "2019-05-24T17:56:42Z")
> [@Jack\_Burden](#): > > I’d never heard of Viggo Mortensen before the LOTR films either, but he’s become recognizable with a nice run of roles. Though maybe Jon Snow tracks closer to Aragorn and Jamie closer to Boromir, which brings us back as these conversations inevitably do to Sean Bean. The Prince Who Was Promised … To Die In The First Act. He was pretty famous in the 90s. I remember discussion at the time of LoTR about how Aragorn was being played by [the devil from The Prophecy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CiuSr-6xP4), which was the stand-out (albeit brief) performance from that movie. His other notables were GI Jane with Demi Moore and A Perfect Murder with Michael Douglas. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/49 "2019-05-24T19:11:53Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > You mean that Sopranos 9 mm handgun I bought was not HBO authorized? 🙂 What, don’t you have your [Tony Soprano bobblehead](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1442/8318/products/0024-tony-soprano-bobble_873x700.jpg?v=1520571801)? ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/50 "2019-05-24T20:02:21Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The Terminator and Star Wars movies she had lead roles in were both massive commercial successes, so I’m not sure how you can say she bombed. The general rule of thumb is that a movie needs to gross domestically double it’s production budget before it can be profitable (and even then might not be depending on how much was spent on marketing). Terminator: Genisys had a domestic gross of $89M against a $155M production budget, which would make it a huge bomb. It did happen to do quite well overseas ($440M) but it’s hard to know exactly how much it made because studios usually get less of the overseas sales. Bloomberg estimated it would have to make $400M to break even, so that’s probably around where it ended up at best. Certainly not a massive success. Solo made $213M domestic (and didn’t do well overseas, only $179M) against a $275M production budget, and probably had a HUGE marketing budget too, so, again, probably a loser. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/51 "2019-05-24T20:15:29Z")
I heard they didn’t want it to drag on. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/52 "2019-05-24T20:40:19Z")
Viggo had a pretty big role in Crimson Tide which came out in 1995. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/53 "2019-05-24T21:05:18Z")
Sure, some of the actors in Game of Thrones were somewhat known prior. Sean Bean was probably the best-known actor of the bunch, but Mark Addy (Robert Baratheon) was in The Full Monty and had a crappy sitcom on CBS in the US. For the most part though, the cast was unknowns (and therefore cheap) but now are world famous. I remember seeing Matt LeBlanc on Graham Norton’s chat show a few years ago where he described how the producer of Friends took the cast (the main six actors) out to dinner in Los Angeles or Las Vegas before the show started and how they were all sitting there, being ignored by everyone else in the restaurant. LeBlanc said that the producer pointed out that this was probably the last time they could be anonymous in public. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/54 "2019-05-24T21:15:54Z")
I stand corrected about my claim of commercial success. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/55 "2019-05-24T23:36:30Z")
> [@magnusblitz](#): > > Solo made $213M domestic (and didn’t do well overseas, only $179M) against a $275M production budget, and probably had a HUGE marketing budget too, so, again, probably a loser. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I stand corrected about my claim of commercial success. To be fair, _Solo_ had generally favorable (although somewhat mixed) reviews and the domestic box office was not that bad. What did it in was a relatively very poor performance in overseas markets. Although the film had its problems, as the fourth _Star Wars_ film in a little over two years it may have been affected by franchise fatigue as well as competition from _Avengers: Infinity War_ and _Deadpool 2_. In other circumstances it might have done OK. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/56 "2019-05-24T23:42:00Z")
I wonder why the audience hasn’t suffered franchise fatigue after so many Marvel movies. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2019, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/57 "2019-05-25T00:21:31Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I wonder why the audience hasn’t suffered franchise fatigue after so many Marvel movies. Of recent MCU movies (since 2013), _Solo_ had a better domestic box office than _Thor: The Dark World_ and _Ant-Man_ and not that much less than _Dr. Strange_ and _Ant-Man and the Wasp_. It also did better than several earlier movies like _The Incredible Hulk_, _Thor_, and _Captain America: The First Avenger_. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2019, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/58 "2019-05-25T04:39:55Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > To be fair, _Solo_ had generally favorable (although somewhat mixed) reviews and the domestic box office was not that bad. What did it in was a relatively very poor performance in overseas markets. Although the film had its problems, as the fourth _Star Wars_ film in a little over two years it may have been affected by franchise fatigue as well as competition from _Avengers: Infinity War_ and _Deadpool 2_. In other circumstances it might have done OK. I also suspect that, coming out just a few months after the extremely polarizing _The Last Jedi_, _Solo_ wound up being the victim of aggrieved Star Wars fans who were still pissed off about TLJ. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/59 "2019-05-27T21:57:12Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I also suspect that, coming out just a few months after the extremely polarizing _The Last Jedi_, _Solo_ wound up being the victim of aggrieved Star Wars fans who were still pissed off about TLJ. I think coming out two weeks after Infinity War and one week before Deadpool 2 hurt even more. Departing from their traditional end of the year release schedule was a huge mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404/60 "2019-05-29T21:18:44Z")
Kit Harrington is in rehab for alcohol and other issues so I think he’s done with the show for good. [Everything Kit Harington Has Said About Fame Struggles](https://people.com/tv/kit-harington-struggles-game-of-thrones-fame/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-didnt-they-milk-out-game-of-thrones-one-more-season/834404.md?page=4)