In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss talk about the process of adapting the George R. R. Martin novels (the Song of Ice and Fire series) to television screenplays.

In the interview, the producers say that they would very much like to adapt the entire series of books “in a perfect world,” and that while wanting to stay true to the books, they are inspired by the liberties that True Blood takes, and plan to have “more surprises for the readers” in the second season. Benioff says:

You don’t want people to go in smugly thinking they know every single thing that’s going to happen.

They also talk a lot about how they approached having to make changes from the book to screen, and if they worried about appeasing or angering the fan base. Benioff says:

The choices we made were always about what’s going to be best for the show and because of that we ended up being quite faithful to the book because it’s a fantastic book and we loved the characters and we loved the plot lines and we didn’t feel any reason to deviate just the sake of deviation. Obviously there are certain changes that are made because you have to make certain changes in an adaptation, but never because “Uh-oh the fans or the messageboards might scream bloody murder if we do this or that.”

Eagerly waiting for the second season, we are also interested in what the producers have to say about that. On whether they’ll do things differently this time around, Benioff says:

I think a lot of things. […] In terms of doing things differently, usually you have a little bit less work going into the second season, because you’ve got your cast set and you’ve got your sets set. But with this there are so many new characters that come into the second book and even though not all of them will make it into the series, a bunch will, so we’ve got a lot of casting to do. There are a lot of new worlds our existing characters visit so there are lots of sets to be built and new locations, so with any luck we’re going to be shooting in three different countries in this coming season. So there is quite a lot of work ahead of us.

Would you like the show to carry on for the entire book series, or do you think its popularity will fall over the years? Maybe they could come back whenever book 7 is released and do a wrap-up movie?

You are able to read the full interview, in which the producers talk about the sex scenes the Dothraki language, character deaths and the reactions they’ve had from viewers here at The Sydney Morning Herald.