It’s no secret that HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” team is moving faster that author George R. R. Martin. The showrunners are already planning for the day when their series catches up and surpasses Martin’s books, and in that event they’re going to have to write beyond what exists on the page. They have been conferring with the author already in case this becomes a reality, and already have some contingency plans in place. One of them? Delaying storylines so Martin can catch up.
In an interview with the Australian press, Kristian Nairn —aka Hodor, Bran Stark’s gentle giant guardian— revealed that he and Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) will not appear in the upcoming fifth season of “Game Of Thrones.”
"We have a season off and we have a year’s hiatus, solely because I imagine our storyline is up to the end of the books," Nairn told Yahoo! News. "So, I get my year off now to do Rave of Thrones and gallivant all over the world."
It’s an interesting move considering Wright is already beginning to grow too old for the role of a young boy (he’s 15), but it appears the show doesn’t have much choice. It’s a canny move, take one storyline out of the mix, focus on others and hope Martin’s next book provides a guideline for the following season.
Martin recently revealed that he’s laid clues throughout the books as to the series’ ultimate ending, and admitted that some perceptive fans online have already guessed what that is. But of course he’s not saying which one is right, so you’d have to weed through days of predictions and theories online, and you still wouldn’t be much closer to understanding which was correct.
There is no official release date for the premiere of Season 5 of "Game of Thrones,” but it is once again expected to begin around April 2015. There’s also a story making the rounds that Cersei (Lena Headey) is going to be naked on the show, and how fans can “relax,” and in some cases “rejoice,” because the scene almost didn’t happen, but is now confirmed. But given this weekend’s phone hacking scandal, rejoicing is rather tasteless, don’t you think?
