HBO has renewed its most popular show through season 6 but, while the network hopes for several more seasons, it has decided against a Game of Thrones feature film—for now.
Programming president Michael Lombardo squashed movie rumors, believing a film would be unfair to HBO subscribers. He told EW, "Certainly there have been conversations where it’s been said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do that?’ But when you start a series with our subscribers, the promise is that for your HBO fee that we’re going to take you to the end of this. I feel that on some level [a movie would be] changing the rules: Now you have to pay $16 to see how your show ends."
Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have said that the show will likely wrap after seven or eight seasons, but Lombardo hopes for more.
"This is the hard part of what we do," he said. "We started this journey with David and Dan. It’s their vision. Would I love the show to go 10 years as both a fan and a network executive? Absolutely."
He added, "We’ll have an honest conversation that explores all possible avenues. If they weren’t comfortable going beyond seven seasons, I trust them implicitly and trust that’s the right decision—as horrifying as that is to me. What I’m not going to do is have a show continue past where the creators believe where they feel they’ve finished with the story."
Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has said that a film would be a great ending to the series, but "is 100 percent focused on his books and the series and has only held out the movie concept as something way down the road."
Weiss wants "to go out on our absolute highest note." Benioff added, “We know basically how many hours are left in this story. We don’t want to add 10 hours to that. It’s about finding that sweet spot so it works for us and for HBO and, most of all, it works for the audience.”
Season 5 of Game of Thrones premieres April 12, 2015
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