As Game of Thrones enters its final season in 2019, HBO is already looking to keep the hype going for the epic fantasy franchise with the planned spinoffs having big budgets from the word go.
At the INTV conference in Israel, Francesca Orsi, HBO Senior VP of Drama, said (via THR) during the panel “The Best of HBO” that the spinoffs will have budgets that come close to what the current series gets, and that they will go over what the media company spent on the early seasons of Game of Thrones.
“$50 million (per season) would never fly for what we are trying to do. We are going big.”
Orsi added “it feels like corporate malfeasance to not continue it,” restating the premium cable network’s announcement in 2017 to develop multiple spinoffs for the show.
Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass), Brian Helgeland (Legend) and Carly Wray (The Leftovers) along with A Song of Ice and Fire writer George R.R. Martin were tapped to work on spinoff ideas.
Orsi also noted that the final season of Game of Thrones should live up to expectations, citing the table read for the last episodes being “a really powerful moment in our lives and our career.”
“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.”
Good to hear that whatever the spinoffs end up being about, we’ll have a finale for the cultural phenomenon that is Game of Thrones worth looking forward to.
