'GOT' Would've Run For 13 Seasons If George R. R. Martin Got His Way

Game of Thrones is officially over, but if the story's creator George R. R. Martin had gotten what he wanted, the fantasy epic would only be a little over halfway done at this point. The author recently opened up about his vision for how long the show would have been on the air, revealing that Game of Thrones would've run for 13 seasons in his ideal world. However, Martin could not get the creative team behind the show to keep it going for any longer than eight seasons.

George R. R. Martin is still laboring over the final two volumes of his A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is the basis for Game of Thrones, so the HBO series had to conclude the show without actually having the concluding books to use for reference. At a recent red carpet, Variety asked Martin why the TV show reached its end in Season 8 rather than continue for a few more seasons, and Martin revealed that he and the show's bosses David Benioff and D. B. Weiss actually had differing opinions on how long the series should go on for:

We could have gone to 11, 12, 13 seasons, but I guess [showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss] wanted a life ... If you've read my novels, you know there's enough material for more seasons and they made certain cuts, but that's fine ... David and Dan have been saying for like five years that seven seasons was all they would go, and we got them to go to eight, but not any more than that. There was a period five years ago where they were saying seven seasons and I was saying 10 seasons and, you know, they won.

Of course, it makes sense that both George R. R. Martin and HBO also would likely want to see Game of Thrones continue for as long as possible, but on the other hand, the actual team working on the show might want to stretch their wings with different projects after eight years of being so tied to Game of Thrones. Now that the series is over, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have already booked their next high-profile gig creating the next Star Wars movie. The actors on the show are also now freed up to pursue different movie and television projects after being typecast as their Game of Thrones characters and being beholden to the show's demanding schedule for the past eight years.

Plus, fans are still getting more adventures in Westeros soon enough, as HBO is already in production on a prequel series set thousands of years prior to the events shown on Game of Thrones, along with up to four other possible prequels in development talks.

And fans are also still eagerly awaiting George R. R. Martin's final two books — which will be entitled The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. Martin has not released a new addition to his series since putting out his fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, shortly after Game of Thrones debuted back in 2011, and there is no word yet on when fans can expect the new books to be released.