Winter is Coming - Season 2

[shipperx]

Interview with the producers about Season 2 Game of Thrones.  Excerpt:

Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are currently in Belfast, knee-deep in pre-production for season two of Game of Thrones. They took some time out of their schedule to chat with the Los Angeles Times about how the work is going so far and what to expect in season two. Here is some of what they had to say:

There are some big shifts between the first book and the second — different characters, new locations, huge battle scenes and new elements like … [spoiler redacted]. How closely are you sticking to the book?

Weiss: The book is always going to be our template, our go-to bible. It’s mainly about the balancing act between keeping the characters the viewers have spent so much time investing in front-and-center and introducing all these new characters George has come up with and giving them their fair share. That’s what we’re currently engaged in doing.

So you’re still rewriting?

Benioff: We’re definitely still rewriting. You start out with your dream scenario, and then the hard reality hits you and you make adjustments. We’re still in that adjustment phase. There’s a lot of writing and a lot of casting still. Most series if you get second season you’re done with most of the casting. With the second book and the second season, a whole slew of characters make their appearances.

Weiss: I’m sitting here looking at our casting grid, which is a grid of names and faces of all the characters. Last year I remember being so excited as I’d watch week after week — it gradually fills in and finally … you have this beautiful wall of faces that represents your cast. Now I’m looking at the grid again, and half the people are gone. And there’s a grid to be filled in again with a new group of people.

Benioff: Luckily it's a big enough cast that the people we're attached to ... the whole top row is all people we know...
 

 

The interview is very spoilerish for Season 2.     If you want to know (or have already read the books) link.  If you don't want to know, don't click.

Of some brief note (and in a totally expected turn of events because of the difference between TV and books and because of things like actor contracts meaning that you can't shelve major characters for an entire year):

 

Weiss: In the book there are a couple of characters who have more of an offscreen role and come back in Book 3. But in the case of, say, Robb Stark {...}  we realized there’s no way to talk about this guy and not have him in the show. So there are people offscreen in the book who we are going to write onscreen in the show ...

Benioff: In the case of Jaime Lannister, he’s got one scene in the second book, but he’s such an important character we want to see more of him. There’s fluidity in that certain scenes from the third book find their way into the second season  {...} We wanted to make sure those characters [that people love] stayed in the audience’s mind and didn’t disappear for a whole year.

Comments

[shapinglight]

And didn't read the whole interview, but my brief skim revealed that there's a wholesale massacre at the end of season 1. Argh! I thought all the deaths had happened.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Nah. There isn't a wholesale massacre next week. They're just talking about the season as a whole has seen some 'big deaths.'

[shapinglight]

Oh, okay. And of course there's still Khal Drogo. I don't expect him to live beyond the next ep.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

They've killed off three of their major leads so far: King Robert, Ned Stark,
Viserys Taragyrn. Two were the top names in the credits.

Granted they aren't characters that I cared that much about, and sort of saw their deaths coming a mile away, but apparently not everyone is used to tv shows that kill off major characters like we are. ;-)

[shapinglight]

I'd be really astonished if people hadn't seen Robert's and Viserys's deaths coming, though. Ned is the one that would have taken them by surprise. People don't expect the main POV character to die like that.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The Ned death is probably the only shocking one in my opinion.
Since they marketed him as the central character and lead POV, a risky choice, but effective.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I was talking about this elsewhere and it's partly the difference between a multi-book series and television. In television, yo don't kill your highest profile star near the beginning of the tv series. If you look at the book series as one long story, which is what it is, well...the mentor does often die in the first act thus sending the heroes on their journeys. Because of the parameters of tv, we're set up to think that Ned is the hero. In the book with chapters set up by pov, it was easier to sit back and look at the chosen pov's and wonder if... Oh... Maybe the other pov's are the 'heroes'. In the book, Ned was just one of many pov characters ( they were Ned, Catelyn, Arya, Sansa, Jon, Dany and Tyrion). That distinction is lost in the more objective television format. (which I think will be helpful for Robb, who in the book we primarily see through his mother's eyes.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's interesting how much of the second and third books that they are bringing forward - as well as the fourth book. Not a bad decision - considering a lot of that is flashback and backstory.

Also, I've read elsewhere that it appears they are going to take a lot of things implied about Robb in books 3 and 2 front and center. Thank God.
The way Martin wrote it - was harder to follow. And made it harder to care what happened to Robb. One of the many reasons I've been liking the tv series over the books.

The two co-creators of this series are rather interesting. Both are Irish Lit majors who got a Masters in doing thesis on Beckett and Joyce, both are novelists and film-writers, who have adapted their own works to screen.

Robb and Jamie do need to be kept front and center - since both characters arcs are rather important in book 3. Book 2 sort of wanders around a lot anyhow - I remember getting incredibly bogged down in the middle of it.
It's also when Davos was introduced...which I'm hoping will be more interesting in the series than in the books.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Quite frankly there was stuff in Robb's story that I wanted to see. I think the only reason we didn't is because he wasn't a POV character. Since that isn't an issue with television, heck yeah. Show us Robb's plot in 'real' time.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Was he a pov character in Clash at all? I vaguely remember him being one, albeit briefly. Most of it though is oddly enough told through Catelynn and Theon Greyjoy - neither of whom are really in the battles Robb is in.

That said? They left out the entire Jeyne Westerling and Syblle Westerling story - so as a result, we really don't understand why Robb does what he does in Storm, he just seems like an idiot. It's a huge flaw in the books.
The writer chooses in some respects the oddest pov's to follow - his choices remind me a little of Citizen Kane to be honest. Going with characters who aren't really in the midst of the action or are somewhat removed.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ack. To clarify - by they left out? I mean George RR Martin not the tv writers. We find out about it through Catelynn not Robb.