No way. There was way too much to cram into one season. The assault on the wall could be a half a season.

I like splitting the seasons so it gives GRRM time to complete books 6 and 7.

But even at this rate it looks like HBO will still eventually pass him and that would suck to find out the ending from the tv show.

The pacing just feels drawn out to me. Red Wedding should've hit midseason and the wall should've been the season finale. Even in the book the Red Wedding is only like what, a bit over a quarter into the story? I also didn't like the changes they made to it, it really lessened the impact. They essentially took out or overly simplified all of the good misleading plot threads GRRM sets up (attack on Moat Cailin) and replaced it with "well his wife dies a horrible death instead, that'll make up for it right?" Also, where the hell is Greatjon Umber who was built up in the 2nd season and then completely non-existent in the 3rd..

Actually, the Red Wedding is more than halfway through Book 3. It's just that once the Red Wedding happens, for the rest of the book nearly every chapter has major events happening, so there was a lot more action in the last 1/3 of the book. I thought they did well last year building up to Dani torching the slave master and gaining her army as the first big climax scene in episode 4, then building back up for the episode 9 Red Wedding. Those were bad ass moments. Now they have a lot to fit into next season.

I'm still not sure how they're going to limit it to 7 seasons. They're really going to have to start leaving stuff out to compress the final 4.5 books into 4 seasons. I have a feeling the final season/conclusion of the series may have nothing to do with any book that GRRM will have written at the time. If I were doing it I'd stick with 2 seasons/book from this point on, or combine books 4 and 5 into 3 seasons. Which would of course get us to the currently planned series end at the conclusion of A Dance With Dragons. Leaving 3-4 more years to cover The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.

Yeah, except there is no way you can stretch books 4 and 5 out that much without losing the audience unless you add some action that the books dont have. Especially since most of books 4 and 5 are happening at the same time. I think you can get two seasons out of those two books at most, and I think some of that stuff is going to be covered this season already as far as Theon and Bran's stories go, and some of Dany's too. I think Book 6 will come out next year, and given where the story sits right now, book 6 could have more action than book 3 even did. We know it will have to start with two huge battles right off at Mereen and Winterfell, plus a host of other plots that are right on the brink of being good. Book 6 can be stretched out over at least two seasons I would bet. I would expect it to go something like this:

Season 4 (filmed 2013, airing 2014): Covers rest of Book 3 and parts of Books 4 and 5

Season 5 (film 2014, air 2015): Covers rest of Books 4 and 5, with maybe a few things held back.

Season 6 (film 2015, air 2016): Covers any remaining Books 4 and 5 stuff, and begining of book 6. Book 6 will be released in 2015 before show airs. Show producers will have seen early drafts of it of course in time to write their scripts.

Season 7 (film 2016, air 2017): Covers Book 6

Season 8 (film 2017, air 2018): Covers rest of Book 6 and maybe starts to creep into Book 7 even though it has not been released yet.

Season 9 (film 2018, air 2019): Covers Book 7 which will be released to public in 2019.

Season 10 (film 2019, air 2020): Finishes series.

Of course it may not last that long on HBO, though 10 years would be a great run if it does. Helps that so many people have now read the books and will watch it through to the end.

They will need to spend some time getting the audience up to speed on the secret of Jon's true parents and the Azor Ahai aspect of the story. Not sure how they will handle those parts.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The producers have stated that the series is only running for 7 seasons. And I'm wondering how in the world they can possibly do that.

They can't and finish the books in 7 seasons, especially with book 3 being split over 2 seasons. I saw an article that quoted the producers at 8 if HBO wants to pick it up that long, but then speculates it could be longer depending on how long and action packed books 6 and 7 are. I think it will go 9 or 10 seasons, but doubt it could be done well in 9 unless they go to more than 10 episodes.

If it's popular enough it'll run past that, look at True Blood, the series that should've died with season 4.

It's not a matter of popularity. That's how they've said they're laying out the show. The blueprint for it is over 7 years. Was a fairly big story about a year ago.

I think they'll either have to go to longer seasons, or end up going over 7. I'm not sure how they can fit 5 or 6 books into 7 seasons, much less 7 books.

It's just an image that NSFW for language.

Books 4 and 5 don't have as much made for tv action in them as the first 3. They could combine a lot of those events to get to 8 seasons total.

Agreed.

Let's say they only alott a season and a half to books 4-5. I think that's insane, but for the sake of argument... Giving half of next season to season three, half to 4/5 and then season 5 for the rest. That gives just 3 seasons for books 6 and 7, which will probably be the largest and most "made for tv action"y books of the entire series.

And that's giving them 8 seasons to do it, which is one more than they're shooting at.

HBO commissioned a Game of Thrones mixtape with all GoT-related songs. It's all hiphop, but whatever.

<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/users/80953324&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;visual=true"></iframe>