It is no secret that Game of Thrones was a game changer for Television. Not only was it a smashing international success giving viewers a unique bigger-than-film experience throughout its eight seasons, but the HBO show was also incredibly expensive by all TV standards.
During the first season, each episode cost around $6 million; by the last season of Game of Thrones, each episode cost roughly $15 million.
Even though the debut season was by no means cheap, it did not satisfy George RR Martin. And recently, he has come forward in a new book called Fire cannot Kill a Dragon about the behind-the-scenes stories of the groundbreaking show, and revealed his least favourite scene.
“Where we really fell down in terms of budget was my least favorite scene in the entire show, in all eight seasons: King Robert goes hunting. Four guys walking on foot through the woods carrying spears and Robert is giving Renly shit. In the books, Robert goes off hunting, we get word he was gored by a boar, and they bring him back and he dies. So I never did [a hunting scene],” the author said.
“But I knew what a royal hunting party was like. There would have been a hundred guys. There would have been pavilions. There would have been huntsmen. There would have been dogs. There would have been horns blowing — that’s how a king goes hunting! He wouldn’t have just been walking through the woods with three of his friends holding spears hoping to meet a boar. But at that point, we couldn’t afford horses or dogs or pavilions,” Martin added.
The show never had the budget to film an epic hunting party like Martin envisioned.
Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, written by James Hibberd, will be released Tuesday, October 6 and tell the story of how the popular show Game of Thrones was made.