Actor Charles Dance says a Game Of Thrones movie may be in the works. Dance, who plays villainous patriarch Tywin Lannister on HBO’s hit fantasy drama, suggested as much during a Daily Beast interview to promote his upcoming film The Imitation Game. “There’s talk of eventually trying to do a feature film, but I don’t know which of the storylines,” the actor said. “There’s so much to cram into a film.”
It’s not the first suggestion that the dramatic spectacle of the show’s conclusion—currently locked away within the bearded vault that is George R.R. Martin’s head—may simply be too big for TV. The author himself hinted as much earlier this year when he told The Hollywood Reporter, “It might need a feature to tie things up, something with a feature budget, like $100 million for two hours. Those dragons get real big, you know.” It doesn’t hurt that a move to the big screen would finally allow Thrones to throw off the stifling shackles of HBO censorship and provide viewers with the levels of medieval gore, nudity, and cruelty that Martin’s story demands.
Anyway, given that Game Of Thrones is already plenty epic in scope and shot with cinematic flair—not to mention the way it struggles to cover a book’s worth of material with 10 hour-long episodes at its disposal per season—the continued talk of a film makes you wonder if producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss understand that Community’s “Six Seasons And A Movie” mantra was intended as a hopeful joke, not a legal obligation for TV series.
Game Of Thrones is set to return to HBO for its fifth season in 2015.