‘Game Of Thrones:’ HBO Says Final Season Feature-Length Documentary Set
For those Game of Thrones mega-fans who just can’t get enough Westeros, HBO has announced that for the final season of the show the cable network has commissioned a feature-length documentary of the show’s last season. According to a piece in The Hollywood Reporter, a feature-length documentary spanning the making of the beloved epic fantasy-drama’s seventh and final season titled Game of Thrones: The Last Watch will drop on May 26, one week after the show’s final episode airs.
The doc will span two hours and cover an entire year filmmaker Jeanie Finlay spent embedded with the cast and crew on set while the final season was being crafted. Finlay is a widely respected and award-winning British filmmaker, known for Pantomime, Seahorse, and the multiple award-winning Orion: The Man Who Would Be King.
According to HBO, the documentary “delves deep into the mud and blood to reveal the tears and triumphs involved in the challenge of bringing the fantasy world of Westeros to life in the very real studios, fields and car-parks of Northern Ireland.”
The film promises to reveal for fans some of the nuts and bolts of how the show is put together, offering a glimpse behind the curtain to reveal some of the movie magic crafted by show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. But beyond simple “how’d they do that” explanations, HBO has also promised that the doc will offer unprecedented access from the “trenches of the production,” showing the cast and crew coping with brutal weather, all-night shoots, crushing deadlines – and perhaps their biggest challenge of all, their rabid fanbase.
But the cable giant also says that the film won’t just be a by-the-book documentary that checks off all the right boxes by rote and then sends fans on their way. They promise it captures the heart and spirit and love that the creators, as well as the fans, have poured into the cable phenomenon over its entire seven-season run.
“Much more than a ‘making of’ documentary, this is a funny, heartbreaking story, told with wit and intimacy, about the bittersweet pleasures of what it means to create a world — and then have to say goodbye to it,” read a post on HBO’s Game of Thrones blog page.
And while fans no doubt hunger to see if and how the show’s creators will manage to satisfactorily resolve their favorite characters’ storylines, the prospect of a final season is bittersweet as well. For fans facing the harsh reality of a finite six-episode final season ending on May 19, things might have just gotten a bit easier to swallow, given that The Last Watch will air the subsequent week.
