HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo spills the beans

Mar 13, 2015 15:53 GMT  ·  By
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, from “Game of Thrones”
   Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, from “Game of Thrones”

This week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly is a gift to all the millions of “Game of Thrones” fans out there, because it’s dedicated to the upcoming, fifth season of the HBO show. It premieres on April 12, in case you were wondering.

Besides offering a new look at some of the favorite characters on GoT, the issue also includes interviews with castmembers, producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, and HBO boss Michael Lombardo, President of Programming.

His quotes are very important in terms of making an educated guess on the future of the series.

“Game of Thrones” ends with season 7, or when the producers decide it should end

Some time ago, producers Weiss and Benioff hinted that they wanted “Game of Thrones” to end with season 7 or 8, at the most, saying they didn’t want to drag the story for longer than necessary just because they could.

Obviously, HBO respects their decision, but they’d love it if the show continued for a while longer, because it’s their biggest cash cow right now. Who would want such an amazing thing to end, Lombardo says with honesty.

“Would I love the show to go 10 years as both a fan and a network executive? Absolutely,” he says. “If [Benioff and Weiss] weren’t comfortable going beyond seven seasons, I... 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.”

So if the producers say they’re done with season 7, that will be it, Lombardo makes it clear. The best case scenario for this right now is that Benioff and Weiss agree at least to split the final season into 2 parts, like it happened before with “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad.”

Naturally, this would give the network an extra year to make more money, while producers wouldn’t feel like they were completely selling out and / or diluting the story to the point where it’d be ruined.

There will not be a “Game of Thrones” movie

George R.R. Martin, the author of the series “Song of Ice and Fire,” on which “Game of Thrones” is based and which isn’t even completed yet, has long been saying that he’d love to see a feature film happen further down the line.

Martin is closely involved in the TV series, having written some episodes and being always on hand to give input on how his literary work is adapted for the small screen.

In his opinion, a “Game of Thrones” film would be perfect because it would offer the chance to tie up loose ends much better than a TV production, while also offering the best closure possible.

If you ask Lombardo, making plans for a feature film to come out after the series finale would be the equivalent of forcing loyal fans to pay more money to find out how the story ends. You simply can’t repay the years they supported your series this way, he says; so no, there will be no GoT movie coming, at least not with HBO’s involvement.