Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau thinks it’s a bad idea to film multiple endings for the acclaimed HBO series. The hit fantasy drama – based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novel series and adapted for television by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss – has come a long way since its debut in 2011, earning its spot as one of the biggest and most talked about shows ever to grace the small screen. Sadly, the series is quickly nearing its end, and the game of thrones will soon present its victor.
Game of Thrones season 7 garnered HBO multiple record-breaking viewings, despite multiple episode leaks, and with only six episodes left, they want to make sure that none of the remaining episodes go live days before their scheduled air date. Furthermore, in order to combat spoilers, HBO’s head of programming Casey Bloys recently said that the series’ producers plan on filming multiple endings. It was unclear, however, whether that meant they will be filming multiple finales or simply have various versions of the show’s last few minutes. Regardless, the very notion of having multiple endings puzzles one of the series’ stars.
Coster-Waldau, who plays one of the series’ main characters, Jaime Lannister, spoke to Marie Claire recently about HBO filming multiple endings for Game of Thrones, something he outright denied. Although he hasn’t read the scripts for the finale yet, he thinks the very idea of spending extra money on content that won’t ever see the light of day is absurd.
“Do you think that’s true? It seems really stupid to me. I mean if it’s true I don’t believe it, but I don’t know, maybe. I mean, I haven’t read the script, so unless they will show several endings that could be a twist, they’re not going to waste that money. They know how expensive it is to shoot. You’re not going to waste $100,000 a day to shoot something you’re not going to use. It’s not going to happen.”
Although season 8 only has six episodes, many of them will be reportedly be feature-length, meaning they’ll run longer than the typical 60-minute airtime and will, therefore, cost significantly more to shoot. A recent report indicated that Game of Thrones‘ final season will be the most expensive one yet, costing the network over $15 million per episode. So, filming multiple endings would obviously run up the bill for HBO.
Then again, Coster-Waldau admits to not having read the script yet, so it’s entirely possible that Benioff and Weiss are planning on filming multiple endings and simply haven’t told the cast about their plans yet. After all, the original source for the news was Bloys, one of the network’s heads, not some random source. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens when Game of Thrones season 8 finally airs.
Credits: Screenrant