Game of thrones was huge not because it had big flashy battle sequences and dragons but because it was a really intense political drama about flawed people abusing their power. Those stories are really hard to tell.
I think that’s mostly it. You could replace the fantasy setting with squabbling nobles in Renaissance Italy, and if it leaned into the political intrigue / cloak-and-dagger stuff and was well executed , it could do great numbers.
Which ones are hard to tell, the dragon stories or the political dramas? For prestige TV writers the latter is probably easier because it’s similar to a lot of things that’s already in that the genre, and I think part of why the latter TV shows fails was because they tried to go for the game of thrones-y political drama angle when the source material doesn’t lend itself to it.
Game of thrones was huge not because it had big flashy battle sequences and dragons but because it was a really intense political drama about flawed people abusing their power. Those stories are really hard to tell.
I think that’s mostly it. You could replace the fantasy setting with squabbling nobles in Renaissance Italy, and if it leaned into the political intrigue / cloak-and-dagger stuff and was well executed , it could do great numbers.
Which ones are hard to tell, the dragon stories or the political dramas? For prestige TV writers the latter is probably easier because it’s similar to a lot of things that’s already in that the genre, and I think part of why the latter TV shows fails was because they tried to go for the game of thrones-y political drama angle when the source material doesn’t lend itself to it.