Conception and development

The showrunners D. B. Weiss and David Benioff created the series, wrote most of its episodes and
directed some of them.


George R. R. Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, is attached to the series as an executive
producer and writes one episode per season.
According to David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the two came up with the idea of adapting George R. R.
Martin's novels to the screen in 2006, after Benioff began reading the first novel, A Game of Thrones. He
called Weiss to share his excitement, and Weiss finished the thousand-page book in "maybe 36
hours".[16] They successfully pitched the series to HBO, and convinced Martin a veteran screenwriter
himself in the course of a five-hour meeting in a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard to agree to the
idea. Benioff recalled that they won Martin over with their answer to his question: "Who is Jon Snow's
mother?"

The series began development in January 2007.[17] HBO, after acquiring the TV rights to the novels,
hired Benioff and Weiss to write and executive produce the series, which would cover one novel's worth
of material per season.[17] Initially, it was planned that Benioff and Weiss would write every episode
save one per season, which Martin, who also joined as a co-executive producer, was attached to
write.[17][18] Jane Espenson and Bryan Cogman were later added to each write one episode of the first
season.[2]

The first and second drafts of the pilot script, written by Benioff and Weiss, were submitted in August
2007[19] and June 2008,[20] respectively. While HBO found both drafts to their liking,[20][21] a pilot
was not ordered until November 2008,[22] with the 20072008 Writers Guild of America strike possibly
delaying the process.[21]

The budget of Game of Thrones has been compared to that of the TV series Rome.[23] The pilot
reportedly cost HBO between US$5 and 10 million,[24] and the total budget for the first season has
been estimated at US$5060 million.[25] In the second season, the show obtained a 15% increase in
budget in order to be able to stage the most important battle in the "clash of kings," the civil war that is
the season's focus.[26]