A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was almost the first Game of Thrones movie, says the show’s creator, and it almost happened thanks to George RR Martin.

• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms It was initially considered as a film.
• It was George RR Martin’s “preference” for that to happen, says his showrunner
• HBO also thought about launching the game of Thrones series all at once

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (AKotSK) almost saw the light as the first game of Thrones film, and it was George RR Martin’s “preference” that that be the case.

The new HBO Max show, premiering this Sunday (January 18), is based on a short story titled The errant knight. This is the first entry in Martin’s ‘Dunk and Egg’ trilogy of novels, which take place around 100 years before the events involving Daenarys Targaryen, Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister, to name just three.

considering that The errant knight At only 66 pages, the adaptation of her story seems tailor-made for a feature film rather than a multi-episode television series. And, responding to a question from TechRadar during a roundtable before AKotSK At the launch of season 1, showrunner Ira Parker revealed that such a scenario was advocated by Martin himself.

“George preferred to make a two-hour movie,” Parker responded. “And when HBO came to me, they were very receptive to any length or format we wanted to use.

“Depending on the underlying material, the 30 to 60 minutes [episodic format] “It gave us a pretty wide margin to be able to establish the type of story that was necessary,” he continued. “There was talk of six episodes from the beginning, because everyone read the novel. We know how much [story] There is for mine and we didn’t want to send Dunk on any weird side quests.”

Determine what was the appropriate means to tell The errant knightThe story, as well as the length of each episode, weren’t the only major decisions Parker, Martin and the show’s main creative team had to overcome.

If it was another Thrones prequel in Dragon House or the main show itself, episodes from each show’s eight-episode seasons have been released weekly. However, as Parker mentioned, AKotSK It only consists of six episodes, with installments of between 30 and 40 minutes each. So did he or HBO executives see the value in releasing its entire first season on launch day and consider doing so?

“Everything was on the table,” Parker reflected. “[HBO thought about] release two episodes at once or release them all at once. I actually never had any real conversations about it as I always assumed it would be once a week. There’s something fun about waiting for a new game of Thrones show. It’s always nice when there’s a new series you can do that with. That’s how I thought of seeing it, but nowadays, who knows?