This might be a problem. Because showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have been pretty adamant about the hit fantasy TV show based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series ending in seven.
This news comes from Entertainment Weekly's big GoT feature (which also revealed Arya Stark's snazzy new duds), where HBO programming president Michael Lombardo announced he'd prefer a 10-season run for the show. 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.
Although HBO has a reputation for ending shows before the creator wants them to end (man, I will never forgive them for Deadwood) it's never really forced any show to continue past when its creator wanted it to. But it's very clear Lombardo would like the hit series to stick around and continue making HBO scads of money, and will do his best to convince Weiss and Benioff to take their time getting to GoT's end game. My gut tells me HBO gets them to add an eighth season at least.
But don't expect that Game of Thrones movie that occasionally gets bandied about. Again, Lombardo:
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.
I actually completely support this.
[Via The AV Club]
Contact the author at rob@io9.com.