The 'Game of Thrones' TV-Show Creators Already Know How the Books End

Vanity Fair contributing editor Jim Windolf talks to George R. R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the ongoing book series on which the popular HBO show Game of Thrones is based, who tells Windolf that the show is indeed catching up to the books: "They are. Yes. It's alarming."

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In the April issue of Vanity Fair, on stands March 13, show co-creator David Benioff tells Windolf, "Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him [Martin] and just talk through where things are going, because we don't know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character." Martin tells Windolf, "I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren't there yet. I'm hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me."

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Windolf reports that the presence of so many child actors in the cast, including the terrific Maisie Williams as Arya Stark, increases the time pressure. "This is a serious concern," Martin tells Windolf. "Maisie was the same age as Arya when it started, but now Maisie is a young woman and Arya is still 11. Time is passing very slowly in the books and very fast in real life."

Windolf also speaks to several cast members, including Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, the "halfman." Of his role, Dinklage tells Windolf, "It just seemed like something I had never come across before, especially in the fantasy genre, which I still refuse to call this, even though we have dragons. It is just something that I was so eager to embrace, because it turned the dwarf stereotype in the fantasy genre on its head. And he's a hero at the same time." Dinklage continues, "Even in The Lord of the Rings, which I really loved-I loved those books as a child and I adore Peter Jackson's movies-but there's just that thing with the dwarf stuff. That's complete fantasy. I had done The Chronicles of Narnia, with the long beard and all of that, because I definitely wanted to explore that and have an opinion of it from the inside, but I just feel like this character, Tyrion, was a complete human being. Shock!"

Benioff and co-creator D. B. Weiss tell Windolf that the show has a lifespan, and they would like to wrap it up after seven or eight seasons. "It doesn't just keep on going because it can," Weiss says. "I think the desire to milk more out of it is what would eventually kill it, if we gave in to that."

Windolf also asks Benioff and Weiss about the recent rumors that President Obama receives screeners of the show to watch before the general public. In an e-mail, they jointly reply, "One perk of being the most powerful man in the world: yes, you get to see episodes early."

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