Game of Thrones has always been tight lipped when it comes to spoilers, but it sounds like producers are upping their game for the series finale. While the show tries to prevent leaks, GOT star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau bashed the notion that producers are filming extra scenes just to keep the ending a secret.
According to The Sun , the 47-year-old actor thinks it is a stupid idea to spend enormous chunks of money to film alternate endings. Coster-Waldau, who portrays Jamie Lannister on the show, doesn’t even think the rumors are true, especially considering how expensive it is to shoot an entire episode. As a rough estimate, the actor explained how producers are not going to spend $100,000 a day to film a scene that doesn’t end up in the final cut.
The comments follow the news that cast members won’t even know how the show will end until the finale airs. The head of programming for HBO, Casey Bloys, said that producers are shooting different versions of the ending so that even the cast is kept out of the loop.
“You have to do that on a long show. Because when you’re shooting something, people know. So they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that there’s no real definitive answer until the end,” Bloys explained.
Despite Bloys’ comments, it sounds like Coster-Waldau’s perspective is more in line with the truth. According to Daily Mail , it costs around $10 million to produce a single episode of Game of Thrones . That cost will likely increase with the show’s final season, and it doesn’t seem likely that producers will expand that budget just to prevent leaks. Further, Bloys’ comments are believed to have been inspired by the script leaks that happened in Season 7 and should not be applied to Season 8.
This past summer, the script from Season 7’s penultimate episode was leaked on a website in Spain. Summaries of additional scripts were leaked in India and multiple people were arrested for the hack.
Filming for Season 8 of Game of Thrones has not started. HBO has not released an official premiere date for the new season, though fans shouldn’t expect it to arrive until sometime in 2019. We can only hope that producers can keep a tight lid on spoilers and prevent any major plot details from leaking before the finale.
[Featured Image by HBO]
