'Game of Thrones' is about to get its 'biggest' battle yet in season 6
HBO's hit drama has filmed "definitely the biggest" action sequence yet for the upcoming sixth season, writer-producer Bryan Cogman told Entertainment Weekly.
"We've always wanted to get to a place - story-wise and budget-wise and time-wise and resource-wise - where we would be able to do a proper battle, with one army on one side, one army on another side," he added.
And it sounds like this battle will be closer to the classic wartime scenes you're used to in movies, with CGI kept to a minimum. As EW describes it: "hundreds of human soldiers on one side of a field, another army on the other side, and then there is a clash that is highly tactical, yet character-driven, and shown from start to finish."
Or as Cogman says: a "proper battle."
Showrunner Dan Weiss confirmed it's the most ambitious battle the show's seen, with the largest number of extras, as well as horses. It was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who also did "Hardhome," the season-five episode with the onslaught of White Walkers. Shooting took a month.
"We wondered, 'Why don't you see more fully fleshed-out battles in movies and TV?'" Weiss said. "Then you get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to actually shoot these things in a way that isn't just helter-skelter chaos but actually gives you a sense of battle geography and the ebb and flow, and you realize why."
When "Game of Thrones" comes back on the air in April, we'll see why, too.