In a bumper day for Game Of Thrones news, we have no less than three hot Westeros updates to share with you: one explaining the show’s past, one teasing the present production of season 8, and one relating to those future spinoff projects. We’d better get a shuffle on, then…
First up, a morsel of information relating to a classic Game Of Thrones mystery from the show’s past: what were the final words that Ned Stark muttered quietly before his head plopped off? Sean Bean himself said this on the matter, revealing that Ned was saying a prayer:
“I couldn’t be too specific, because I don’t know if religion [like that] was around in those days, whatever they were. I just thought, ‘What would you do if this were really gonna happen?’ You probably would pray. You probably would murmur some words and you’d keep it quiet. You’d keep it to yourself.”
Secondly, HBO’s VP of drama Francesca Orsi has spoken about the table reads that recently took place for Game Of Thrones season 8. It sounds like there were a lot of deaths, and plentiful clapping:
“[That] was a really powerful moment in our lives and our careers. None of the cast had received the scripts prior, and one by one they started to fall down to their deaths. By the end, the last few words on the final script, the tears just started falling down. Then there was applause that lasted 15 minutes.”
And finally, we have a nugget of news concerning HBO’s future Westeros projects: Francesca Orsi has revealed that the upcoming Game Of Thrones spinoffs will have huge budgets. Whichever projects from the big pile of spinoff ideas end up getting made, the budget per season will exceed $50 million.
As Orsi put it, “$50 million (per season) would never fly for what we are trying to do. We are going big.” As a comparison point, the final 6-episode season of Thrones itself is costing the network $90 million.
Game Of Thrones returns in 2019. There is no word yet on when the spinoffs will start appearing.
More as we hear it.