As anticipation continues to build for the sixth series of Game of Thrones, two runners from the show have assured fans of George R.R. Martin’s books that the on-screen version won’t spoil the plot of the next novel.
As any fan of the series knows, season 6 will the first time the show overtakes its source material. Hardened Thrones fans were told in January that Martin’s next novel, The Winds of Winter, will not make it to shelves for the TV show premieres on April 24. It was feared that even if they avoided watching the show, it would be pretty difficult to avoid the dreaded plot spoilers that will undoubtedly flood the internet as soon as the first episode’s closing credits arrive.
But showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have told Entertainment Weekly that they need not be concerned, as the two will actually take notably different directions.
“People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled – and it’s really not true,” Benioff said. “So much of what we’re doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we’re not going to talk so much about that – and I don’t think George is either. People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They’re quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show.”
How they plan to achieve such a distinction is a mystery, and it’s hardly a surprise that people involved with the GOT canon want people to stay interested in both tellings of the story. But Weiss says that the author’s flexible approach means the TV can blaze its own trail.
“What makes the books so great is that George doesn’t make meticulous blueprints for every beat of this story and then fill in the blanks dutifully going from A to B to C, fleshing out an outline,” he added. “At a certain point, we realized we were going to outpace the books and we kind of chose to see it as a great thing on both sides – there’s this amazing world George has created and now there are two different versions, and there’s no reason we can see why you can’t be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuH3tJPiP-U
