I'm betting they don't really care as long as people are watching it somehow someway. Ratings are only really important if you want to advertise, right?
another change in ep 2 that I forgot to mention... Spoiler Bronn is now Commander of the City Watch. I guess that means no Bywater which isn't a big deal I guess, but I wonder how they will handle Bronn becoming a Lord in book 3 now.
Plus, this is the kind of show that will have people watch it multiple times. I have already seen Episode 2, but will watch again on Sunday.
I think you're in luck. That will be in Season 4 IIRC. An exec was quoted as saying (when HBO ordered seasons 3 and 4) that if they got to the RW that it would be a big accomplishment or something similar.
Does that mean A) getting to the red wedding in 4 seasons will be a great accomplishment or B) getting to the red wedding before the show goes so over budget and gets canceled will be a big accomplishment?
I inferred that he meant the latter at the time. If we can last long enough to show it then it'll be a success.
That should be the season three finale or the one before the finale, then end it with Joffrey gettin murked and catelyn being a zombie.
– Producers on season three, assuming it happens: “Storm of Swords is too big to do as one season. There’s a certain season in Swords, if we can get to ‘RW’ we’ve accomplished something. I think we can get to RW.” Pretty sure it was "producer" that's also one of the two writers.
GOT is HBO's highest rated show other then Boardwalk isn't it? I don't think they'd cancel it because of going over budget if it continues to get this high of ratings. Rome got cancelled because of money problems but I don't think it had nearly as high of ratings as Thrones got in its first season
Yeah GOT has always had pretty good ratings. 2.0 and just shy of 4 million views for the first episode of season 2. And yeah Rome was a little tricky. It was originally suppose to be a mini-series but then was reworked to become a show. It did well [made a profit at least in the first year] and average between the 2 to 3 million viewers per episode. It wasn't bad but it wasn't getting the ratings or viewers that Sopranos or 6 feet under[or whatever else was on at the time] was getting. That plus it was becoming way too expensive. They felt like it wasn't worth continuing.
'Game of Thrones' returns to biggest ratings yet by James Hibberd Tags: TV Ratings, News Comments 95 Add comment Image Credit: HBO The second season premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones delivered series-high ratings Sunday night. Thrones returned to 3.9 million viewers. That’s up a massive 74 percent from its series debut last year. It also greatly improves upon the show’s previous all-time high, which was just over 3 million viewers. Including all three Sunday airings, the show delivered 6.3 million viewers. The numbers mean a third season renewal is pretty much guaranteed (and also dissolves any concerns that last season’s killing of popular characters would result in a dip). Despite airing on a network with fewer subscribers than its basic cable rivals, HBO’s Thrones stomped the season 2 premiere of AMC’s Shitty AMC Show (1.8 million) and the latest episode of Mad Men (2.9 million).
HBO doesn't care about ratings that much, it's all about subscriptions. Ratings mainly appeal to advertisers which HBO doesn't need
Well if that many people are watching I'm sure some bought the scripts to do so. Whatever it takes to keep it going.
I'm pretty sure Sopranos ratings destroy any other HBO show, but I don't have the numbers in front of me. After reading the quote, I don't feel like the RW comment was directly budget related and more about the story they could accomplish in a season. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I feel like based on events season two will be the most expensive. They can cheat by most of the other large battles. The only other expensive element I think would be the dragons.
Kinda. You have to listen to the whole thing but it was more if we can even get to the end of season 3. I'll find it but there was some uncertainty in his voice as to whether the show would even last and that's because the actual quote he's referring to is from before season 1. He said "If we can keep this alive somehow, if we can get to a certain scene... if we can get to rw then we've accomplished something"
The show was definitely a huge risk. Fantasy isn't something super popular. Im hoping that the success has them more optimistic about its future.
From talking with people leading up to the second series first ep, they don't really see it as fantasy. These are people who had no clue it was a book though. Now with magic and other elements being added that's gonna change but I think that's helped it so far.
The first episode was absolutely perfect for a pilot. Whats more intriguing than ending an episode with a grown man throwing a child out the window to keep his incestuous relationship under wraps. They hooked so many people with that one scene.
Question: Got anything interesting about Game of Thrones that you’d like to share? —Allyson Ausiello: Spoiler Episode 4 contains the most confusing/disturbing/disorienting birth scene in TV history. :bartscottcan'twait:
Just watched episode 2, it's not all that bad. I don't see any of these minor changes affecting the main storyline. Honestly, as someone who read the books, I don't mind these surprises here and there. It beats just having the book be the show verbatim. Question though: Is it actually confirmed that the death was Rakharo? That would explain the scene between the handmaiden and Danaerys but I'm not sure. Too bad if so. And I saw the unattractiveness of Yara coming as soon as she was casted. It's too bad - who doesn't love a hot pirate?
Can't sleep so rewatching season 1. One of my favorite scenes of the entire series. Ned is watching Arya and her dance lesson. His expression turns as he starts to hear the sound of wood turn to metal. Ends with Syrio stabbing arya in the stomach with the wooden sword and you hear the sound of metal slicing through her.
That season has to end with tyrion murking Shae and Tywin then disappearing down the fireplace asking himself "where do whores go?"
yeah i think its pretty clearly rakharo. doubt they'd have rakharo show up latter then have jorah say, "lol whoops, guess i should have pulled the head all the way out. my bad."
The finances of Game of Thrones By Winter Is Comingon April 5, 2012 Filed Under: Editorial, Press While we wait for the season three greenlight that is almost assuredly coming, I thought it would be good to go over why Game of Thrones is such a lucrative show for HBO. There have been several recent articles that covered this very topic. First up, this Wall Street Journal article by John Jurgensen looks at the budget for this season. With the ambitious “Game of Thrones,” spiraling costs are a risk. The reported budget for season one was about $60 million; costs increased by roughly 15% for season two, says Michael Lombardo, HBO’s president of programming.Even with a 15% increase, there were some concessions required to make everything work. “We came to [HBO] on bended knee to plead for more money,” says Mr. Benioff. The producers declined to discuss the scale and costs of the Blackwater sequence; inevitably it involved some concessions. Mr. Lombardo says a discussion around building nine ships ended with the decision to make one.Despite that, the money that HBO did give David & Dan for that pivotal battle seemed to be more than enough for director Neil Marshall, judging by this quote in a recent Empire magazine article. The Blackwater episode, as the director puts it, “is pretty much one long battle, on a much bigger scale than anything in Centurion. I couldn’t believe the scale of production value I had. It was as big, if not bigger, than most features I’ve done: 400 extras, costumes, horses, stunts, fires… We had a full-size galleon to play with and a green-screen set that was doubling as several other ships, and we were setting that on fire and throwing people overboard. Then there’s a Saving Private Ryan-like beach battle, with all these guys getting shot to pieces, an attack on a castle.”So we know HBO is willing to spend some money, even if it isn’t an exorbitant amount. But why? Well, one reason is that fantasy, and this show in particular, is really exploding in popularity right now, as this recent CNN article from Joel Williams explains. Season two of HBO’s epic fantasy drama “Game of Thrones,” the television adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, debuts this Sunday. Watching along with the die-hard fans that helped make the book series popular will be a hoard of new, not-necessarily-nerdy fans. Poised to become a crossover hit before the first episode even aired, the show was buoyed by passionate fans of the books who evangelized this particular epic to non-believers for years. That dedication is finally paying off. “I’ve been trying for years to get a half a dozen friends to read the books. Once the show caught on, I got them watching and it got them to read it. I love it,” says Stephen Dabundo, a 26-year-old lifelong fantasy geek from Atlantic City, New Jersey, who has only now been able to share this part of his life with certain friends.And that popularity equals revenue for HBO, not just in the form of subscriptions, but also international and home video sales. This excellent article from Slate’s June Thomas explains well why HBO is able to make so much more money on their shows than their premium cable competitors, Starz and Showtime. HBO typically banks half the subscription fee from new viewers; Showtime and other pay-cable networks tend to strike deals in which distributors pay a flat licensing fee and then keep customer subs for themselves. This encourages providers to discount Showtime, which increases subscribers without necessarily earning the network more money in the short term. HBO has made other decisions that bring in the bucks. Unlike most networks, HBO owns, rather than licenses, almost all its shows. (Showtime owns about half its output; the recent breakout hit Homeland is produced by Fox.) That makes programming more expensive, but it’s a smart move. The first season of Game of Thrones was reported to cost between $50 million and $60 million to produce; but international sales covered more than $25 million of that. (Showtime, on the other hand, doesn’t benefit from international sales of Homeland—Fox does.) HBO also has complete control over decisions about syndication and DVDs. Not only does it bank the proceeds from DVD sales—Season 1 of Game of Thrones sold about 350,000 copies in the first week it was available—it can also time the release date to maximize subscriptions.So HBO has to spend more money on their shows, but in turn that makes them more money. And Thrones is making a lot of money for them. The season two premiere ratings show that the audience for this show continues to grow and with it a jump in revenue. So fear not, the season three greenlight is coming (and maybe season four as well), and likely to come with it, an even bigger budget. [Thanks to Michael Harper for the Empire magazine excerpt!] Tagged as Budget, David Benioff, episode 209, HBO, Neil Marshall. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
I cracked and downloaded it. The Craster/John scene did seem pretty unnecessary, interested to see where they go with it. Balon Greyjoy was absolutely perfect imo. Melisandre would get it.
alright fags i finally saw the episode (duh). what do you guys think they're gonna do with the craster/jon story line?
my gut is they will use it as the reason Jon leaves with Qhorin, but then that would rob us of the fist and fuck up the part where Jon finds the dragonglass and gives some to Sam. plus I wanted to see the scene with Qhorin, Mormont, and Jon when Qhorin asks if he can choose his men and he picks Jon first and talks about how the blood of the First Men flows through his veins and tells him he better find his wolf and all that. I always liked that scene.
it will be interesting to say the least. besides the craster thing, the other changes really didn't bother me.
the thing that will be interesting about Bronn, and I'm sure they'll find a way around it, is Tyrion used Bywater to intercept Tommen when Cersei tried to send him away. they'll have to change that because I can't imagine they'll have Bronn leave the city.